"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other unfortunate Jacobites were hanged on Kennington Common. Before the carts drove away, the men flung their prayer-books, written speeches, and gold-laced hats gaily to the crowd. Mr. James (Jemmy) Dawson, the hero of Shenstone's touching ballad, was one of the nine. As soon as they were dead the hangman cut down the bodies, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered them, throwing the hearts into the fire. A monster—a fighting-man of the day, named Buckhorse—is said to have actually eaten a piece of Townley's flesh, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... large and very beautiful picture in the manner of a great English Pre-Raphaelite. This was called "Thomas the Rhymer, meeting with the Faerie Queen," but it did not follow the description of the ballad. The Faerie Queen, a figure of a Botticellian grace, was coming, with all her fellowship, out of a wonderful pinewood, while Thomas the Rhymer, handsome and young and lean and brown, his harp across his back, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... began to work, he dashed carelessly into another stanza of his favourite ballad. I know not if you are acquainted with German; but I cannot resist the desire of gratifying my own ears with a repetition of the sounds of the thrilling consonants which produced so great an effect on me on that occasion. His voice ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... calm flow of the river, the low, massive bridge of boats and the commonplace outskirts of a busy city contributed to make up a very different picture from that of the poetic "castled" Rhine of German song and English ballad. The old town has, however, many beauties, though its military character looks out through most of them, and reminds us that the Mosel city (for it originally stood only on that river, and then crept up to the Rhine), though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the correctness of that assumption, but the hazard was a part of the game. He thrust his pistol into a broken oak where a woodpecker had nested, then flapped his reins and clucked to his mule. For the sake of a bold appearance he raised his voice in a spirited and cheerful ballad, but from time to time he broke off since he had stern ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... following folk-song is believed to be a local (and adult) version of the ballad which, according to The Times, is now being sung by Communist children in the Glasgow Proletarian Schools, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... his paternal ground With pride the latent sparks of genius found In many a local ballad, many a tale, As wild and brief as cowslips in the dale, Though unrecorded as the gleams of light That vanish in the quietness of night "Why not," he cried, as from his couch he rose, "To cheer my age, and sweeten my repose, "Why not be just and generous in time, "And ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... battlements, looks over from afar, whereat the desolateness of the valley penetrates yet deeper into the soul. The friend who gave me this print added a letter, with a request that I would explain the mysterious forms by a ballad.... I bear the image with me in peace and in war, until it has now spun itself ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... hundred nights and more Of twisting, encumbered sleep, And now they make it a ballad, Not for one year or for two only But until the days lie deep As the sand's depth at Kefu, Until the year's end is red with Autumn, Red like these love-wands, A thousand nights are in vain. And I stand at this gate-side. You grant no admission, ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... evening company, so every one came early, and in a little while the quiet evening air grew musical with merry voices and gay laughter, then became quieter, and was replaced by notes from the piano, or some one voice trilling out a popular song or a pretty ballad. Everything went flourishingly; to be sure, there were more ladies than gentlemen, which required much watching and managing on Bea's part, that no lady should suffer a dearth of masculine attention. Once, Ralph was missing from the room for some ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Ode to Sir William Temple Ode to King William Ode to The Athenian Society To Mr. Congreve Occasioned by Sir William Temple's late illness and recovery Written in a Lady's Ivory Table Book Mrs. Frances Harris's Petition A Ballad on the game of Traffic A Ballad to the tune of the Cutpurse The Discovery The Problem The Description of a Salamander To Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough On the Union On Mrs. Biddy Floyd The Reverse Apollo Outwitted Answer to Lines from May Fair Vanbrugh's House Vanbrugh's House ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... our favour. Providence has unfathomable secrets. I was never struck by a ball from a bandit. I bear the scars of seventeen wounds; but these wounds were made with naked blades. It could be said of me, as in I know not which Scotch ballad: "Did not the Devil's soldiers pass through the balls, instead of the balls passing through them." Yet I have often been fired at; sometimes the barrel of a gun has been pointed at my chest, and that at a few paces from me. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... of Lantine with all the consequence due to an ancient name in which the rest of us forgot to feel any pride. But this was my sister Margery's way; to whom, as honour was her passion, so the very shadows of old repute, dead loyalties, perished greatness, were idols to be worshipped. By a ballad, a story of former daring or devotion, a word even, I have seen her whole frame shaken and her eyes brimmed with bright tears; nay, I have seen tears drop on her clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson's Church, with no more cause than old ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... that Paul Lorrain[A] has resolved upon a very sudden reformation in his tragical dramas; and that, at the next monthly performance, he designs, instead of a penitential psalm, to dismiss his audience with an excellent new ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to these growing evils, and you will very much oblige your ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... flowers, her face is tanned by labour. The bleating and affrighted sheep are plunged, unwillingly, into the pool, and now by the sturdy hand stripped of their fleecy coats. The bottle quickly passes, the simple tale goes round, the ballad purchased at the fair is sung; the mower whets his scythe, and the grass and the wild-flowers fall before it; the waggon, heavily laden, removes the odoriferous hay; and the neat-mown fields display a brighter green. The cuckoo, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... mind, its fancy, imagination, sympathies, affections, are almost all gone out of memory, and are scarcely to be obtained. 'Little Red Riding Hood,' and other fairy tales hallowed to children's use, are now turned into ribaldry as satires for men; as for the creation of a new fairy tale or touching ballad, such a thing is unheard of. That the influence of all this is hurtful to children, the conductor of this series firmly believes. He has practical experience of it every day in his own family, and he doubts not that ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... pins, when a man's married his trouble begins," quoted Anna gayly, slipping up behind him and, putting her arms about his neck; "one would think the old nursery ballad was true, to look at you, Lennox Sanderson. I never saw such a married-man expression before in my life. You wanted to know why I fell in love with you. I could not help it, because you ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... stones I trod on; his words rang in mine ears, but I kept them from mine heart. I remember he alleged many a Scripture, but those I valued not; the Scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings' price.[39] Alas! What is the Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables;[40] but for the holy Scriptures I cared not. And as it was with me then, so it is with my brethren now, we were ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the royal couple at the head of the procession, a proceeding which brought him various severe admonitions until he fell back, as duty demanded, to his deferential and modest post. On the other hand, as the three maids of honor began to sing the ballad of Cinderella on her way to the palace of Prince Charming, the royal couple condescendingly declared that the song was appropriate and of pleasing effect, whatever might be the requirements of etiquette. Indeed, Rose, Frederic, and Gregoire also ended by singing the ballad, which rang out amid ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... that it is proposed to enjoy my services for the propulsion of one of the automobiles—that, while you will be responsible for the 'shoving' of Ping, these delicate hands will flick Pong across France. Very good. Let the Press be informed; call forth the ballad-mongers. What would have been a somewhat sordid drive will become a winged ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... have to fill my mouth with the hundred and twenty-first psalm to keep from answering improper, and after all, Bridget will only ask if I don't know the tune to that owld penny ballad. 'Tis true enough about the tune" (Boyd confessed), "me having no pitch-pipe, but Bridget has no business to miscall ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion which he voiced persisted after him. According to some American historians of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Loyalists were a comparatively insignificant class of vicious criminals, and the people of the American ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... exclusively Aytoun's, such as 'The Massacre of the McPherson,' 'The Rhyme of Sir Launcelot Bogle,' 'The Broken Pitcher,' 'The Red Friar and Little John,' 'The Lay of Mr. Colt,' and that best of all imitations of the Scottish ballad, 'The Queen in France.' Some were wholly mine, and the rest were produced by us jointly. Fortunately for our purpose, there were then living not a few poets whose style and manner of thought were sufficiently marked to make imitation easy, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of nankeen, or dark blue, brown, or black silk. During the cold season both men and women wear one summer garment over the other, keeping the whole together with a girdle; in the extreme heat, however, they suffer them to float as free as "Nora Creina's robes" in Moore's pretty ballad. ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... strong praise. Allan Cunningham, in his Songs of Scotland, thus freely comments on it:—"Tulloch-gorum is a lively clever song, but I would never have edited this collection had I thought with Burns that it is the best song Scotland ever saw. I may say with the king in my favourite ballad,— ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... himself a madman? Who sought to climb over his senses and found himself impaled by a tower of Babel? Where are his angers, his disgusts that were the noble shadows thrown by his egoism to blot out a world? Ballad of rhetorical questions. My vanity preens itself with reminiscences. I smile. I am depressed and content. Answers whisper. Mallare is on his feet. His experiments are ended. His mania to possess himself is a snow that falls forgotten in his past. Vale, the lunatic. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... of a speech or two, that the other four acts might limp on with a little less absurdity. No! He had not leisure to consider what might be separately inoffensive!" So, too, some eight years before the passing of the Licensing Act, Gay's ballad opera of "Polly," designed as a sequel to "The Beggar's Opera," incurred the displeasure of the Chamberlain, and was denied ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... kerchief. The gaiety of the day seemed infectious, and to have seized even him. People stared to see Black Jem, or Surly Jem, as he was indifferently called, so joyous, and wondered what it could mean. He then fell to singing a snatch of a local ballad at that time in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The ballad entitled "The Black Shawl" has obtained a degree of popularity among the author's countrymen, for which the slightness of the composition renders it in some measure difficult to account. It may, perhaps, be explained by the circumstance, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... himself at the door of the cell (which he never entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was singing an old Spanish ballad, the words of which she did not understand, but which had lingered in her ear because the gypsy women had lulled her to sleep with it when she was a little child. At the sight of that villanous form which made its appearance so abruptly in the middle of her song, the young ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... midnight. Another superstition is, that if the new moon happens on a Saturday the weather will be bad during the month. On the other hand, in Suffolk the old moon in the arms of the new one is accounted a sign of fine weather; contrary to the belief in Scotland, where, it may be remembered, in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, it is taken as a presage of ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Vera exclaimed with delight as she was assisted into it, and placed herself comfortably on the cushion, with one hand dabbling in the cool translucent wave. Hubert Delrio opened his manuscript and began to read his ballad, if so it was to be called, being the history of the little boy of four years old, who, being taken with his mother before the tribunal at Tarsus, was lifted on the propraetor's knee, but struggled, crying out, "I am a Christian!" till the propraetor, in a rage, hurled him down. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... do I care! I like O. Henry. I don't see how he ever wrote those stories. Most of them he wrote in prison. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" he ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... in the eyes of the rate-collector fully occupied, has now for several weeks stood with an unmistakably vacant stare. My cook alone, with a young lady friend for company, dwells there. What our great ballad-writers call the patter of tiny feet is stilled. The seaside has demanded its toll, and I have for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... going to let her escape him thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... would condescend to accept such loans from the deanery. And there was at times a lightness of heart about the man. In the course of the last winter he had translated into Greek irregular verse the very noble ballad of Lord Bateman, maintaining the rhythm and the rhyme, and had repeated it with uncouth glee till his daughter knew it all by heart. And when there had come to him a five-pound note from some admiring magazine editor as the price of the same,—still through ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... in the bunk-house some man was wailing a verse of "Ella Re," accompanied by a guitar, and the doleful drone of the hackneyed chorus was caught up by the other men "off shift." But, nauseating as it was to him, this piebald ballad of the hills, it contained one shrieking sentence: "Lost forevermore!" That was ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Hills, the haunt of Thomas of Ercildoune, Jedburgh, Yetholm, the Cowdenknowes, the Yarrow, and Ettrick, all lie on different sides within a circle of twenty miles, and most of them much nearer. Smailholme Tower, the scene of some of Scott's youthful days, and of his ballad of "The Eve of St. John," is also one of these. Grose tells us that "The ruins of Dryburgh Monastery are beautifully situated on a peninsula formed by the Tweed, ten-miles above Kelso, and three below Melrose, on the southwestern ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... and true politeness, where a man might succeed by his merit, there would be some encouragement. But now, when party and prejudice carry all before them; when learning is decried, wit not understood; when the theatres are puppet-shows, and the comedians ballad-singers; when fools lead the town, would a man think to thrive by his wit? If you must write, write nonsense, write operas, write Hurlothrumbos, set up an oratory and preach nonsense, and you may meet with encouragement enough. Be profane, be scurrilous, be immodest: if ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... perfected, though not in the severer Italian form, the sonnet; they wrote with extraordinary delicacy and finish short lyrics in which a simple and freer manner drawn from the classics took the place of the mediaeval intricacies of the ballad and the rondeau. And in the forms which they failed to bring to perfection they did beautiful and noble work. The splendour of The Fairy Queen is in separate passages; as a whole it is over tortuous ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Lord Maxwell, slew Sir James Johnstone at Achmanhill, April 6, 1608, in revenge for his father's defeat and death at Dryffe Sands, in 1593. He was forced to flee to France. Hence his "Good Night." Scott's ballad is taken, with "some slight variations," from a copy in Glenriddel's MSS.—Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... sheer surprise; for an instant, in that state of bewilderment that comes with sudden awakening, he almost believed himself in a Western ranch bunkhouse, and that some happy cowboy outside roared a grotesque ballad. He gazed at the interior of a rough shack built of pine boards, with bunks constructed in tiers on both sides. There were figures in them—Western cowboys, perhaps. Then it seemed, somehow, that the voice drifting from the outside was strangely ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... set the world on fire, though she perish in the conflagration! A fourth is undressing. The fellow bringing in a pewter dish, as part of the apparatus of this elegant and Attic entertainment, a blind harper, a trumpeter, and a ragged ballad-singer, roaring out an obscene song, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... note here the euphemistic tendency to call powerful spirits by propitiatory names. Just as the Greeks called the Furies "Eumenides," the benevolent ones, so is Robin called Good-fellow; the ballad of Tam Lin[38] refers to them as "gude neighbours"; the Gaels[39] term a fairy "a woman of peace"; and Professor Child points out the same fact in relation to the neo-Greek nereids.[40] Hence also "sweet puck."[41] The names ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... selected an old German ballad, long ago a favorite in the highest musical circles, but now cast aside for something newer and more brilliant. A simple, touching little ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... next entertainer, recited a ballad; and Delia also "spoke a piece," an amusing episode of child life, which she rendered with much humor. The next turn was Irene's, and the girls, who were in a mood for ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... essentially uncomfortable character. He scribbled these upon all available pieces of paper, including the fly-leaves of Todhunter's Arithmetic, and of his Latin and Greek primers. In an evil hour, for the tidiness of his school-books, he came across the ballad of "Aiken-Drum," with its rather terrible mixture of humour, realism, and the supernatural. From thenceforth for some weeks—though he adroitly avoided giving any direct account of the origin of these grisly imaginative freaks—many margins ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... symptoms of blindness continue, Salemina," I said, searching for a small lump so as to gain time, "I shall write you a plaintive ballad, buy you a dog, and stand you on a street corner! If you had ever permitted yourself to 'get on' with any man as Francesca is getting on with Mr. Macdonald, you would ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of light, the shapely cone of the hop-oast rises at the end; there are swallows and flowers, and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching, like the words of an old ballad. Now at Mayfield there is a timber house which is something of a show place, and people go to see it, and which certainly has many more lines in its curves and woodwork, but yet did not appeal to me, because it seemed too purposely ornamental. A house designed to look well, even age has not ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... There is a whole ballad—nay, a whole history of the middle ages in this story; for among thousands I can recall none as perfectly characteristic of the times. The absolute aristocratic control of the life of a white slave; its abuse by transferring it to the arbitrary will of an upper servant; the blind ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is intended as the introduction to a somewhat longer one. The use of the old ballad word 'Ladie' for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity, as Camden says, will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... reached my Heart.' She also was masked, and even her figure was hidden by a long dark cloak the hood of which was drawn over her head to meet the mask. She sang so beautifully, with such style and such feeling, it seemed incredible to hear her under circumstances like these. She followed the ballad with Handel's 'Lascia ch'io pianga,' which rang out into the quiet street with almost hopeless pathos. When she descended from the cart to undertake the more prosaic occupation of passing the hat beneath the windows, I could see that she limped slightly, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... these we give an illustration. At first glance they may not appear to be anything very remarkable about the little house and its surroundings, but on second thoughts and glances something more than poetical will be discovered. The old negro ballad from which we have quoted above gives in its lines a charming idea of the river and of the memories and thoughts which cling to it. Excursion parties are very frequent along the river. Some indulge in hunting, and take advantage of the profusion of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... youth the drama was the popular means of amusement. It was "ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch, and library, at the same time. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field." Shakespeare found a great mass ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... brothers. Then there was another person, strictly historical, Knight Eppo, of Kuesnach, who, while acting as bailiff for the Duke of Austria, put down two revolts of the inhabitants in his district, one in 1284 and another in 1302. Finally, there was the tyrant bailiff mentioned in the ballad of Tell, who, by the way, a chronicler, writing in 1510, calls, not Gessler, but the Count of Seedorf. These three persons were combined, and the result was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Juggler, given in the Appendix, I claim to have discovered a new ballad, which has not yet been treated as such, though I make bold to think Professor Child would have included it in his collection had he known of it. I trust that the publicity thus given to it will attract the attention of experts more competent than myself to annotate and illustrate ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... interlocutor for this impromptu minstrel show, presides one of the best fellows in the world. He rises solemnly, his genial round face wreathed in a subtle smile, and announces that he will sing, by earnest request, that popular ballad, "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... been discovered to which Shakespeare could have been at all indebted for the plot or matter of The Tempest. There is indeed an old ballad called The Inchanted Island, which was once thought to have contributed something towards the play: but it is now generally held to be more modern than the play, and probably founded upon it; the names ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... there be full many people Who with evil voice assail me, And with tongue of poison sting me, Saying that my lips are skilless, That the ways of song I know not, Nor the ballad's pleasant turnings. Ah, you should not, kindly people, Therein seek a cause to blame me, That, a child, I sang too often, That, unfledged, I twittered only. I have never had a teacher, Never heard the speech of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... lust of conquest, I suppose I must have willed still further, for the next thing I remember is sitting with Miss Sellars on the sofa, holding her hand, the while the O'Kelly sang a sentimental ballad, only one line of which comes back to me: "For the angels must have told him, and he knows I love him now," much stress upon the "now." The others had their backs towards us. Miss Sellars, with a look that pierced ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... they call it," returned the Gruenewalder; and he broke into a song, which the rest, as people well acquainted with the words and air, instantly took up in chorus. Her Serene Highness Amalia Seraphina, Princess of Gruenewald, was the heroine, Gondremark the hero of this ballad. Shame hissed in Otto's ears. He reined up short and sat stunned in the saddle; and the singers continued to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too true that the voice of God never speaks so articulately to man, as when it speaks in the desperate calm of a soul to which life or death has done its worst. The same solemn thought with which the sonnet concludes, forms the moral of her ballad entitled the "Lay of the Brown Rosary." It is thus that the heroine of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... present owner, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, poet, patriot, and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales, has a long poem entitled "Worth Forest," wherein old Leonard Gale is a notable figure. Among other poems by the lord of Crabbet is the very pleasantly English ballad of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... but I know you write poetry," retorted Yaspard; and then Fred said, "Yes; and do you know he has been impudent enough to compose a ballad about a legend of your family, boy? Think of that! I liked the ballad so well that I asked Garth to bring it along and give us all the benefit; so you are to hear the story of your own great-granduncle, whose namesake you are, done into verse, with all the Viking and Shetlandic accompaniments. ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... was of the same stock as Sir Robert Aytoun noticed above. From his mother, a woman of marked originality of character and considerable culture, he derived his distinctive qualities, his early tastes in literature, and his political sympathies, his love for ballad poetry, and his admiration for the Stuarts. At the age of eleven he was sent to the Edinburgh Academy, passing in due time to the university. In 1833 he spent a few months in London for the purpose of studying law; but in September ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... persisted and Billy finally obliged with what the boys called a pathetic little ballad, entitled: "I Didn't Raise My ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... sturdy old man dealt a good deal of deadly mischief among his assailants, until they broke down the door by thrusting against it with a ladder, and tumbled headlong in upon him. I shall not pretend to be an admirer of old John Brown, any farther than sympathy with Whittier's excellent ballad about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so unutterably from any apophthegm of a sage, whose happy lips have uttered a hundred golden sentences, as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed to so honored a source), that the death of this blood-stained fanatic has "made the Gallows as ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... listened to Annie Walton, he could no more believe that she was expressing a little aimless religious emotion, just as she would sing a sentimental ballad, than he could think that she was only showing purposeless filial affection if she were hanging on her father's arm and pleading for something vital to her happiness. The thought flashed across him, "Here may be the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... a song before the Battle of Hastings: but the Normans loved the purely martial strain, and this was a ballad of French composition, perhaps a fragment of the older "Roland's Song." The "Roman de Rou," composed by Master Wace, or Gasse, a native of Jersey and Canon of Bayeux, who died in 1184, is very minute in its description of the Battle of Val des Dunes, near Caen, fought by Henry of France ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hard to find a woman in one of these rough cuts with a pipe in her hand or at her mouth. An example, in the "Shirburn Ballads" lies before me. The cut, which is very rough, heads a bacchanalian ballad characteristic of the Elizabethan period, called "A Knotte of Good Fellows," ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... sing many verses of this with appealing unction, so long as he was near; yet when he came upon her unawares he might hear her voicing some cheerful, secular ballad, like— ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... at all difficult, and the second player has something to employ his mind besides accompanying chords. They are meaty, and effective almost to the point of catchiness. The "Tale of the Knights" is full of chivalric fire and martial swing, while the "Ballad" is as exquisitely dainty as a peach-blossom. The "Hindoo Maiden" has a deal of the thoroughly Oriental color and feeling that distinguish the three solos of "Les Orientales," of which "Clair de Lune" is one of his most original and graceful writings. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... {6} England, and to see her nephew, Charles the Second, reign as king. She barely saw this. Two years after the Restoration she died in London. Sophia was her twelfth child: she had thirteen in all. One of Sophia's elder brothers was Prince Rupert—that "Rupert of the Rhine" of whom Macaulay's ballad says that "Rupert never comes but to conquer or to die"—the Rupert whose daring and irresistible charges generally won his half of the battle, only that the other half might be lost, and that his success might be swallowed up in the ruin of his companions. His headlong bravery ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Vaudemont to tell him how the villagers of Domremy had been ruined. So he called his squire, Barthelemy de Clefmont, and bade him summon his spears and mount and ride. It reminds us of the old Scottish ballad, where Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead has seen all his cattle driven out of his stalls by the English; and he runs to Branxholme and warns the water, and they with Harden pursue the English, defeat them, and recover Telfer's kye, with a great spoil out of England. Just ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... he stated, "of the only time that I ever, to my knowledge, talked face to face with the devil. It is rather odd how obstinately life clings to the most hackneyed trick of ballad-makers; and still naively pretends to enrich her productions by the stale device of introducing a refrain—so that the idlest remarks of as much as three years ago keep cropping up as the actual gist of the present!... ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Malcom and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's story,—to kneel by the triple stone that says how the three Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher has made a mistake, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... projects; indeed, no period of his whole life was so fruitful in good work. He was going to write some Biblical plays; one entitled "Pharaoh" first, and then one called "Ahab and Jezebel," which he pronounced Isabelle. Deeper problems, too, were much in his mind: he was already at work on "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," but before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... about four hundred inmates, but all heavily chained "to the ground, until they would confess their crimes, whether they had committed them or not." One wonders if this treatment still prevails in the Hameln of Robert Browning's ballad. At Hanover they waited on the Queen by special command, and during a long interview many interesting and important subjects ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... evidently been cast away as useless by some former owner, himself squalid. These she managed to keep on by tying the tops with wrapping-cord. A more unlovely human being it would have been hard to find in all the great city. There she sat, crooning a ballad to herself in a high, cracked voice. It ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... nearest thing to Burns that we have to show; and his faults, almost insuperable to the ordinary reader, are the faults which Burns seldom failed to display when writing in English. But to Burns there was given an instrument perfected by long centuries of use—the Scotch vernacular song and ballad; Carleton had to make his own, and the genius for form was lacking in him. Some day there may come a man of pure Irish race who will be to Carleton what Burns was to Ferguson, and then Ireland will have what it lacks; moreover, in the light of his ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Knickerbocker, Jr. The Bottle and the Bird The Man Who Worked with Dana on the "Sun" A Democratic Hymn The Blue and the Gray It is the Printer's Fault Summer Heat Plaint of the Missouri 'Coon in the Berlin Zoological Gardens The Bibliomaniac's Bride Ezra J. M'Manus to a Soubrette The Monstrous Pleasant Ballad of the Taylor Pup Long Meter To DeWitt Miller Francois Villon Lydia Dick The Tin Bank In New Orleans The Peter-Bird Dibdin's Ghost An Autumn Treasure-Trove When the Poet Came The Perpetual Wooing My Playmates Mediaeval Eventide Song ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James—no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the rank half-volley Its due quietus gets, The bird begins to carol A greeting to the Nets: Amazed at noisy kissing Of ball and wooden blade, In rivalry he whistles A ballad unafraid. ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... about impossible birds and beasts and fishes and what not, I did not let the opportunity slip; while Keene, who had a very fine falsetto on the top of his chest register, would now and then warble, pianissimo, some little ballad of the ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... life. Lady Austen, a widow, took a house near Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, and became a third in their friendship. It was she who told Cowper the story of John Gilpin. The story tickled his fancy so that he woke in the night with laughter over it. He decided to make a ballad of the story, and the next day the ballad was finished. I think I need hardly give you any quotation ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... somebody started the lovely old ballad, "Barbary Allen," in which all joined; then, "I have a True Love in the Army," and "The Swapping Song" followed, while "Whistle up your Dogs, Boys, and Shoulder your Guns," made lively the leave-taking and echoed back from ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... was so rich. Mrs. Boffin wore velvet dresses, and Mr. Boffin, thinking that now he was rich he ought to know a great deal about books, bought a big volume of the History of the Roman Empire and hired a man with a wooden leg who kept a ballad shop near by to come and read ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... that Bacon was familiar with many now obsolete rural words. Bacon, too, may have had a memory rich in all the tags of song, ballad, story, and DICTON. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... trial piece and had sung her trial song, and still it seemed to everyone that Kitty led the van; for her music, although not quite so showy and brilliant as Florence's, was marked with true musical expression, and her song, a sweet old English ballad, came purely and freely ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... which we have before described upon the articulation of the catarrhed would be, in our opinion, so far from displeasing, that we feel it would amply compensate for any imperfections of tune. For instance, what can be finer than the alteration it would produce in the well-known ballad of "Oh no, we never mention her!"—a ballad which has almost become wearisome from its sweetness and repetition. With a catarrh the words would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... great pride, of a fight on the beach between him and a bathing-machine boy, at whose father's property the Prince was throwing stones. An account of this historic battle is preserved in a doggerel ballad, printed and sold locally, and composed Heaven knows where, which is called "Tapping the War-Lord's Claret: Why ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... one of the most appalling misunderstandings of history. Like Faust, the German people have sold their soul to Mephistopheles: Bismarck. And they have sold it for power. They are now paying the price. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger, the Prussian horseman has taken the maiden "Germania" on his saddle. The death's-head hussar has carried her away on his wild career through space until he has brought her to the gates ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... retrospective exhibition, was first entitled The Fisherman and Syren, and afterwards The Mermaid; it is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. The subject is taken from a ballad by Goethe: ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... and dying brothers, Boom for a season, as 'loves' may part; But the old shop-ballad of Morbid Mothers Dives to the depths of the Public's heart. Dearie, with booms, at the best, precarious, All but the permanent needs must fail; And Childie, if Mammy became hilarious, Mammy would ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... here, too, it appears the misfortune might have been avoided if a plan of his own for laying the cable had been adopted. He explained his process, and made it seem as practicable as to put up a bell-wire. I do not remember how or why (but appositely) he repeated some verses, from a pretty little ballad about fairies, that had struck his fancy, and he wound up his talk with some acute observations on the characters of General Jackson and other public men. He told an anecdote, illustrating the old general's small acquaintance ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out, not for death, not for the repose of forgetfulness, but for strength to fight; for more power, more consciousness of being, more God in him; who, when sorest wounded, says with Sir Andrew Barton in the old ballad:— ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... the most brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca.8 In this manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been borne down the tide of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... less pleasure. He detected the identity of the King with the wandering knight, Fitz-James, when he winds his bugle to summon his attendants. He was probably thinking of the lively, but somewhat licentious, old ballad, in which the denouement of a royal intrigue takes ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... in that respect, and possessing a good competent share of such reading as is little read, I was sometimes able to put under his eye objects which had for him the interest of novelty. I remember particularly repeating to him the fine poem of Hardyknute, an imitation of the old Scottish Ballad, with which he was so much affected, that some one who was in the same apartment asked me what I could possibly have been telling Byron by which he was so ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of set music (which is all foreign), and this is the only drawback to their becoming fine instrumentalists. For the same reason, classical music is very little in vogue among the Philippine people, who prefer dance pieces and ballad accompaniments. In fact, a native musical performance is so void of soul and true conception of harmony that at a feast it is not an uncommon thing to hear three bands playing close to each other at the same time; and the mob assembled seem ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering" and "Ivanhoe." How different they are, both in design and execution! The former, in all respects perfect—the latter, in design common-place, and but little enlarged from the old ballad tales of Robin Hood, and histories of the Crusaders; very slovenly in diction, and lengthened out by tiresome repetitions; the same things being told in protracted dialogues which had been previously narrated ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... P. Medsger, the naturalist of Lincoln High School, Jersey City, N. J., for reading with critical care those parts of the manuscript that deal with flowers and insects, as well as for the ballad of the Ox-eye, the story of its coming to America, and the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... was, alas! at the edge of a precipice, amusing myself, like the innocent heroines of all melodramas, by gathering flowers. Suddenly a horrible thought rode full tilt through my happiness, like the horse in the German ballad. I thought I saw that Calyste's love was increasing through his reminiscences; that he was expending on me the stormy emotions I revived by reminding him of the coquetries of that hateful Beatrix,—just think of it! that cold, unhealthy nature, so persistent yet so flabby, something between ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... was to Horace, the robin-redbreast has been to the children of old England. In the celebrated ballad of the "Children in the Wood", we are told that, after their ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Sir Crispin's ballad broke off short, whilst the lad paused in the act of quitting the room, and turned to look ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... tunes of the moment, that it requires very little imagination to picture the schoolboy of Revolutionary days shouting lustily verses from "The Battle of the Kegs," and other rhymed stories of military incidents. Such a ballad was "A Song for the Red Coats," written after the successful campaign ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... until the eating hour, which being come and everything made ready by the discreet seneschal, they sat blithely down to meat, such being the queen's pleasure, after they had sung sundry roundelays and a ballad or two. Having dined orderly and with mirth, not unmindful of their wonted usance of dancing, they danced sundry short dances to the sound of songs and tabrets, after which the queen dismissed them all until the hour of slumber should be past. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... about famous love affairs the other evening, and Fothergil Finch said he was thinking of writing a ballad about ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... the opinion of many scholars that the Iliad and the Odyssey, as they stand today, are not, either of them, the creation of a single poet. They are believed to be mosaics; that is, to be built up out of the fragments of an extensive ballad literature that grew up in an age preceding the Homeric. The "Wrath of Achilles," which forms the nucleus of the Iliad as we have it, may, with very great probability, be ascribed to Homer, whom we may believe to have been the most ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... them, including the best men in the regiment, quietly refused to take a dollar's pay, at the reduced price. "We'se gib our sogerin' to de Guv'ment, Gunnel," they said, "but we won't 'spise ourselves so much for take de seben dollar." They even made a contemptuous ballad, of which I once caught ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that it is impossible to tell in what direction his genius will develop. In whatever style he writes,—the mystical, the historical-dramatic, the impassioned description of natural beauty, the ballad, the love lyric,—he has the peculiarity of seeming in each style to have found the ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... at each gate of the city. The suspension of civic authority during fair-time was for centuries a source of frequent quarrels. As late as the eighteenth century a ballad-singer was punished by the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... children, pray take heed to my little ballad, which shall lead you into all virtues. My mistakes I ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... the Basin of Neptune, glittering and shining, and with its white statues, seemed to inspire him with a happy suggestion, and he trolled to himself a ballad with a nonsensical chorus, popular ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... [German]. instrumental music; full score; minstrelsy, tweedledum and tweedledee, band, orchestra; concerted piece[Fr], potpourri, capriccio. vocal music, vocalism[obs3]; chaunt, chant; psalm, psalmody; hymn; song &c. (poem) 597; canticle, canzonet[obs3], cantata, bravura, lay, ballad, ditty, carol, pastoral, recitative, recitativo[obs3], solfeggio[obs3]. Lydian measures; slow music, slow movement; adagio &c. adv.; minuet; siren strains, soft music, lullaby; dump; dirge &c. (lament) 839; pibroch[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Grogram's "quite irresponsible person," when I caught the sound of Gurnard's name. I turned irritably away. I didn't want to hear that fool read out the words of that.... It was like the warning croak of a raven in an old ballad. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... with Welsh foawr, "giant" (Gaelic famhair), derives the name from fo, "under," and muir, and regards them as submarine beings.[175] Dr. MacBain connected them with the fierce powers of the western sea personified, like the Muireartach, a kind of sea hag, of a Fionn ballad.[176] But this association of the Fomorians with the ocean may be the result of a late folk-etymology, which wrongly derived their name from muir. The Celtic experience of the Lochlanners or Norsemen, with whom ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... delight of the poor peasant parvenu when he heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing a ballad; when he saw her writing French correctly, or making sepia drawings of landscapes, or listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the beauties of the poetry. What happiness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... musical! That's nice. We must have some grand singing matches, but you mustn't sing that ballad. It's Ruth's special property. She sings ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... unto you, That whereas in the course of our care and watchings over the order and police of all and sundry the manufacturers, retainers, and vendors of poesy; bards, poets, poetasters, rhymers, jinglers, songsters, ballad-singers, etc., etc., etc., etc., male and female—We have discovered a certain nefarious, abominable, and wicked song or ballad, a copy whereof we have here inclosed; Our Will therefore is, that Ye pitch upon and appoint the most execrable individual of that most execrable species known ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men * have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
