"Blackthorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every spring. Close beside it is the sea, the ever-changing sea, and between the two is placed the broad high-road. One carriage after another rolls over it; but I did not follow them, for my eye loves best to rest upon one point. A Hun's Grave lies there, and the sloe and blackthorn grow luxuriantly among the stones. Here is ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... saw the sun set: he set and left behind The good old year, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind; And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see The blossom on [1] the blackthorn, the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... bird told her all his story,—how he had tried to fly to the warm countries, and how he had torn his wing on a blackthorn bush and fallen to the ground. But he could not tell her how he had come to the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... round gazed with puzzled looks at the old man as he sat enthroned on his heap of stones, his knotted trembling hands leaning on a blackthorn stick, his face flushed, and his eyes blazing under their shaggy white brows. They could scarcely understand his stoicism; Mrs. Clancy's lamentations were ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... discarded his crutch, as he had threatened, and walked out to the studio, using only a stout old blackthorn stick he had found one day when rummaging among a collection of odds and ends in the attic. He thought the stick was his father's and wondered why so interesting a walking stick—or staff; it could hardly be called a cane, he thought, because it was so large and oddly shaped—should be hidden ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... don't know. Robber, dearest, what is this to you? Give us this money. I feel sorry for them, for the scoundrels! They rejoiced so much, the scoundrels. They blossomed forth like an old blackthorn which has nothing but thorns and a ragged bark. They are sinners. But am I imploring God for their sake? I am imploring ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... little Princess, as her travelling carriage toiled up the Apennine valleys, did not feel some terror of the future and the unknown. The spring comes late to those regions; in the middle of April the blackthorn is scarcely budding on the rocks, the violets are still plentiful underneath the leafless roadside hedges; scarcely a faint yellow, more like autumn that spring, is beginning to tinge the scraggy outlines of the poplars, which rise in spectral regiments ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before him a middle-aged man ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... peppermint, and similar spicy plants; the flowers of the sweet woodroof, those of the burnet, or pimpernel rose; the leaves of peach and almond trees, the young and tender leaves of bilberry, and common raspberry; and the blossoms of the blackthorn, or sloe tree. Most of these when carefully gathered and dried in the shade, especially if they be managed like Indian tea-leaves, bear a great resemblance to the foreign teas, and are at the same time of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the sun set,—he set and left behind The good old year, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind; And the new-year's coming up, mother; but I shall never see The blossom on the blackthorn, the leaf upon ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... face with its craggy nose and obstinate chin; and you saw the kindness and delicacy of the firm mouth. There he stood, flat-footed, easy in his well-worn clothes, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the blackthorn walking-stick he always carried, and looked at you with the quiet sureness of integrity and of power. Peter added a few last touches; and then, instead of signing his name, he painted in a small Red Admiral, this with such exquisite fidelity that you might think that gay small rover ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and almost touching the masses of tough golden-brown seaweed on the rocks, are multitudes of the daisy-flowers of sea-mayweed, flowering samphire, the stars of sow-thistle, and bright yellow bunches of charlock and straggling spires of wild-mignonette, against a darker background of blackthorn, hawthorn, ivy, and furze, lightly powdered with trails of bramble-blossom. Creeks, edged with low hills, wind away from the estuary. When the tide is low, great stretches of mud and sand lie on either side, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... And he had taken her ever so gently round the waist, still silent, waiting for that moment when his heart would leap out of him in words and hers—he was sure—would leap to meet it. The path entered a thicket of blackthorn, with a few primroses close to the little river running full and gentle. The last drops of a shower were falling, but the sun had burst through, and the sky above the thicket was cleared to the blue of speedwell flowers. Suddenly she had stopped and cried: "Look, Dick! Oh, look! It's heaven!" ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... by the graceful poplar, whilst here and there were studded over the fields either single trees or small groups of mountain ash, a tree still more beautiful than the former. The small dells about the farm were closely covered with blackthorn and holly, with an occasional oak shooting up from some little cliff, and towering sturdily over its lowly companions. Here grew a thick interwoven mass of dog-tree, and upon a wild hedgerow, leaning like a beautiful ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... stock the new leather trunk that I recklessly purchased for the shocking price such commodities command in America. At the end of a successfully costly day I registered myself, the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new silver-topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in New York, at the new monster hotel I had never before entered, with a strange feeling of an identity as new as my overcoat. This terrier, by the way, marked my definite division from Roger more than anything else could have done. I ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... to Hesdin, in time for the first beautiful effect of spring-tide flower and foliage. The blackthorn and pear trees were already in full blossom, and the elm, poplar and chestnut just bursting into leaf. Everything was very advanced, and around the one-storeyed, white-washed cottages the lilacs showed masses of bloom, field and garden being a month ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... have adhesive fruits and seeds: for when sheep or other animals get them caught in their coats, they carry them away to other bushy spots, and there, to get rid of the annoyance caused by the foreign body, scratch them off at once against some holly-bush or blackthorn. You may often find seeds of this type sticking on thorns as the nucleus of a little matted mass of wool, so left by the sheep in the very spots best adapted for the free growth ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... fir trees could not be silent any longer. Whoo—too—whoo—ooe! then up he flew with a clatter of his wings and down again into the trees. 'Take two cows, Taffy,' he could not be silent any longer—whoo—too—whoo—ooe! The blackthorn bloom began to faintly show the tiniest white studs, and the boys in great triumph brought in the first blue thrush's eggs. Nature would go on though under the thumb of the north wind. Poor folk came out of the towns to gather ivy leaves for sale in the streets to make button-holes. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Scutchemsee Nob, and when they reached the top, they saw Neville and his second, Mr. Hammersley, riding towards them. The pair had halters as well as bridles, and, dismounting, made their nags fast to a large blackthorn that grew there. The seconds then stepped forward, and saluted each other with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... were in habitual use as beverages among civilized nations long before they ever heard of Chinese tea, of coffee, or of cocoa. The English people, for instance, freely indulged in infusions of Sage leaves, of leaves of the Wild Marjoram, the Sloe, or blackthorn, the currant, the Speedwell, and of Sassafras bark. In America, Sassafras leaves and bark were used for teas by the early colonists, as were the leaves of Gaultheria (Wintergreen), the Ledums (Labrador ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... look upon being ostracised and trodden upon as one of the things they must expect, and they don't kick half as much as they ought to. If they had the enthusiasm and the fighting qualities of the Irish, they would take blackthorn clubs and mow a swath through France wide enough for an army to march over. Why don't you fellows wait until the Jews map out a plan of campaign, and then follow them? It is no dead sure thing that if the people of other countries boycotted France, that they would not ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... together in the form of a cross, which he held high aloft; and thus they rode through the forest, which became thicker and thicker, and the path, if path it could be called, taking them farther into it. The blackthorn stood as if to bar their way, and they had to ride round outside of it; the trickling streams swelled no longer into mere rivulets, but into stagnant pools, and they had to ride round them; but as the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... astonishment in a long whistle, which frightened the birds in the trees, the rabbits within their burrows, and the wicked man and woman behind the hazel bushes, so that they cowered closer beneath the branches, wishing themselves well out of the way of Farmer Grey's stout blackthorn staff. ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... At noon he came to another and similar structure. The pine forest had yielded to knolls of hardwood separated by swamp-holes of blackthorn. Here he left his pack and pushed ahead in light marching order. About eight miles above the first dam, and eighteen from the bend of the river, he ran into a "slashing" of the year before. The decapitated stumps were already beginning to ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... kind of you to say that. (During these speeches, FELIX has sneaked back on the pedestal, still carrying the blackthorn stick.) ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... blackthorn snow Lies along the lovers' lane Where last year we used to go - Where we ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... fact,' said Rollo, 'that Wych Hazel could not conveniently personate a pine tree or Primrose a blackthorn.' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... good for you: he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very little contrast will sometimes serve to make an ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the high jungle in which we had been for the last two hours, and found ourselves in a chena jungle of two years' growth, about five feet high, but so thick and thorny that it resembled one vast blackthorn hedge, through which no man could move except in the track ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I've come across through the fields, and come in here at the gate agen the moat, and I was taking a rest before I came up to the house to ask if you was ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... wid pictures o' death's-heads, an' guns, an' pikes, an' coffins, was but a thrifle to the way they wint on. But they knew I had a thrifle of a sivin-shooter, an' bad luck to the one o' thim that dared mislist me at all. At last it got abroad that I was to get a batin' wid blackthorn sticks, for they wor tired the life out o' them, raisonin' wid me. Well, says I, I'm here, says I, an' the first man that raises a hand to me, I'll invite him to his own inquist, says I, for, bedad, I'll perforate him like a riddle, says I. Well, it wint on an' on, till one day I was ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Care enters, as surely as she did in Horace's time, through the porticos of a Roman's villa. Nor, whether ceilings be fretted with gold and ivory, or whether only coloured with whitewash, does it matter to Care any more than it does to a house-fly. But every tree, be it cedar or blackthorn, can harbour its singing-bird; and few are the homes in which, from nooks least suspected, there starts not a music. Is it quite true that, "non avium citharaeque cantus somnum reducent"? Would not even Damocles ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Alps should bring back an Alpine stock with him; every one who has visited Ireland upon his return has presented some close friend with a blackthorn stick; nobody has made a walking tour of England without an ash stick. In London all adult males above the rank of costers carry "sticks"; in New York sticks are customary with many who would be ashamed to assume them did they live in the Middle West, where the infrequent sticks ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... stream: on either bank great bushes of blackthorn—last native flower of the season—put forth their wealth of magnificent creamy bloom, its rich perfume floating far on the hot summer air. How the sunlight blazed and danced and flickered on the familiar and dearly loved landscape! Over a rise, and the house was lost to view, then good-bye ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Beech Tree, Prosperity Bee Orchis, Industry Bee Ophrys, Error Begonia, Deformity Belladonna, Silence. Hush! Bell Flower (White) Gratitude Betony, Surprise Bilberry, Treachery Bindweed, Great Insinuation Bindweed, Small, Humility Birch, Meekness Bittersweet, Truth Blackthorn, Difficulty Bladder Nut Tree, Amusement Bluebell, Sorrowful Regret Bonus Henricus, Goodness Borage, Bluntness Box Tree, Stoicism Bramble, Lowliness Broom, Neatness Buckbean, Calm repose Buglos, Falsehood Bulrush, Indiscretion Bundle of Reeds, Music Burdock, Touch me not Bur, You ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... lighting up a piece of new golden thatch let into the old gray, and the plum-trees behind it bursting into new-born foam of flowers. Just outside it, above the low cliff, stood two men looking down into the water, seen dark green below through a tangle of brier and blackthorn and emerald foliage of budding elder. The sea served base uses here, for the dust and dirt of many a cottage was daily cast into the lap of the great scavenger who carried all away. The low cliffs were indeed spattered with filth, and the coltsfoot, already opening yellow ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... into an open clearing, where the meadows, tenderly green and wet with dew, sloped upwards into small hillocks, sinking again into deep dingles, adorned with may-trees that were showing their white buds like little pellets of snow among the green, and where numerous clusters of blackthorn spread out lovely lavish tangles of blossom as fine as shreds of bleached wool or thread-lace upon its jet-like stems. Across these fields dotted with opening buttercups and daisies, Walden and his 'head man about the place' made quick way, and climbing the highest portion ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... back to beauty. They laughed at the two brionies, black and white; for though they made a glorious show, with their convolvulus and deeply cut leaves, and sent forth strands of wonderfully rapid growth to run over the sturdy blackthorn, which produced such splendid sloes, and then hung down festoons of glossy leaves into the lane that quite put the more slow-growing ivy to the blush, still these lovely trailing festoons died back in the winter, while their rival growths kept on. These rivals were ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... I, and turned back into my room. Hereupon, having locked the door, I got into my boots, slipped on my coat and knapsack, and, last of all, threw my blackthorn staff out of the window (where I was sure of finding it) and climbed out ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... on. The wind had blown fresh all the morning from south-west, and after Elzevir had left, strengthened to a gale. My leg was now so strong that I could walk across the cave with the help of a stout blackthorn that Elzevir had cut me: and so I went out that afternoon on to the ledge to watch the growing sea. There I sat down, with my back against a protecting rock, in such a place that I could see up-Channel and yet shelter from the rushing wind. The sky was overcast, and the long ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... pitched upon a very pretty method to settle the question of Christmas, left so meekly by Mr. Blackburne to the King, nobility, and most of the gentry. They bethought themselves of a blackthorn near one of their villages; and this thorn was for the nonce declared to be the growth of a slip from the Christmas-flowering thorn at Glastonbury. If the Buckinghamshire thorn, so argued the peasants, will only blossom in the night of the 24th of December, we ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a wattle, floor'd Monk and Bluebottle; The Drag came to grief at the blackthorn and ditch, The rails toppled over Redoubt and Red Rover, The lane stopped Lycurgus and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... time when in the vale, grass-grown, The maiden hears at eve her lover's vows, What time the blue mist round the patient cows Dim rises from the grass and half conceals Their dappled hides. I hear the nightingale, That from the little blackthorn spinney steals To the old hazel hedge that skirts the vale, And still unseen sings sweet. The ploughman feels The thrilling music as he goes along, And imitates and listens; while the fields Lose all their paths in dusk to lead ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... of the waters as before they had had of the snow. But when at last the very spring was come, and the grass began to grow after the showers had washed the plain of the waterborne mud, and the snowdrop had thrust up and blossomed, and the celandine had come, and then when the blackthorn bloomed and the Lent-lilies hid the grass betwixt the great chestnut-boles, when the sun shone betwixt the showers and the west wind blew, and the throstles and blackbirds ceased not their song betwixt dawn and dusk, then began Ralph to say to himself, that even if the Well at the World's End were ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... he saw a stout blackthorn stick which was standing in a corner of the room, jump up into the air and leap towards him. He put his head down on to the carpet, covered his eyes with his hands, and began to moan with terror. The stick came down with what seemed to him superhuman force again and again on his back and ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... bordered on either side by gigantic blackthorn shoots that made it very dark, and by tail grass and big campions, huge giant dead-nettles as high as trees, flickering past darkly in silhouette overhead. Beyond Keston they came to a rising hill, and the driver went slow. At the crest he stopped. The engine ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... and ride him, barebacked and without bridle, holding on by his mane, round the green in front of my Father's Homestead. Before I was twelve, I was a match for any Boy of my own age at a bout of fisticuffs, ay, and at swinging a blackthorn so as to bring it down with a thwack on the softest part of a gossoon's crown. I knew little of spinning, or playing, or harping; but I could land a trout, and make good play with a pike. I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... we need not look outside our own shores. Fifty years ago the priests of Ireland often had recourse to rough methods with the people. Even the aid of the "blackthorn" was occasionally invoked as an effective instrument for securing correction or impressing conviction. Yet, on the morrow, all was forgotten; and the people would die for the man who punished them. Let the priest of to-day but thwart the grand-children ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... heat of argument and the indiscretion of youth, I used expressions which the Papist considered insulting to his religion. He was not one to put up patiently with this, so he would fire up, twirl his blackthorn round his head, and say, "By St. Patrick, you had better not say that again!" In everything else we agreed well enough; but I found, on parting, that all my eloquence had been entirely thrown away. Mr. Mooney remained just as firm a Roman Catholic as ever. Indeed, it ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... taught me a good deal. When it came out I had nearly finished the translation of Amiel, which appeared in 1885, and in March of that year some old friends drove me up the remote Westmorland valley of Long Sleddale, at a moment when the blackthorn made lines of white along the lanes; and from that day onward the early chapters of Robert Elsmere began to shape themselves in my mind. All the main ideas of the novel were already there. Elsmere was to be ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tell you the story, which was about a poor boy who received from a fairy to whom he had shown some kindness the gift of a marvelous wand, in the shape of a common blackthorn walking-stick, which nobody could suspect of possessing such wonderful virtue. By means of it, he was able to do anything he wished, without the least trouble; and so, upon a trial of skill, appointed by a certain king, ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... The blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grass Was starred with flowers that once Griselda prized, But plucked not. She, poor wench, from moon to moon Waxed pale and paler: of no known disease, The village-leech averred, with lips pursed out ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... woodland's waking, All the glades with green and glow salute you with a shout, All the earth is chorussing (Hear the Lady Flora sing!— Her that strews the hyacinths and sets you merry-making), Oak and ash do call you and the blackthorn's out! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... yet return: I, only to the shades whence earth draws me. Meanwhile," she said, looking softly at the fountain playing in the clear gloom beyond, "rest and grow weary again, for there flock more questions to my tongue than spines on the blackthorn. The gardens are green with flowers, Traveller; let us talk ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... quantities of leaves, are in many cases preserved. Among the shrubs are many evergreens, as Andromeda, and two extinct genera, Daphnogene and M'Clintockia, with fine leathery leaves, together with hazel, blackthorn, holly, logwood, and hawthorn. A species of Zamia (Zimites) grew in the swamps, with Potamogeton, Sparganium, and Menyanthes; while ivy and villes twined around the forest-trees, and broad-leaved ferns grew beneath their shade. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... just to lave his meaning clear, Wid flowers of Irish eloquence filled Mr. Furniss' ear; An' he also shook wid passion, an', moreover, shook his fist, An' the Docther an' his blackthorn ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... daisies and golden with buttercups—the "enamelled meads" of Chaucer and the little illumined pictures of the fourteenth-century manuscripts; and the hedges were just such hedges, incredibly green, with here and there a break for the misty silver of the blackthorn. Wherever flowers could bloom they bloomed, in the gardens, in the hedges, by the roadside, in the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... lighting up the country round about, and blazing round about the beacon hill. The beacon hill stands behind Farringford. If you follow the little wood of nightingales and thrushes, and follow the lane where the blackthorn hedges shine in spring-time (lovely dials that illuminate to show the hour), you come to the downs, and climbing their smooth steps you reach 'Mr. Tennyson's Down,' where the beacon-staff stands firm upon the mound. Then following the line of the coast you come at last to the Needles, and may look ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... hair on either side, And see the newborn wood flowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debateable* borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the wind's way still ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... known the sweet enjoyment of a gallop in the vale, Comrades of the chase, I know you will not deem my subject stale. Stand with me once more beside the blackthorn or the golden gorse,— Don't forget to thank your stars you're mounted on a favourite horse; For the hounds dashed into covert with a zest that bodes a scent, And the glass is high and rising, clouded is the firmament. When the ground is soaked with moisture, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... may, for, indeed, I would have you know that the words I spoke yonder were true when I said that you should be glad that you freed me, and that I have tried to serve you. That may be known by the token of the blackthorn spine and ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... that Mr. Kennedy McClure did not carry his money about with him. He had deposited his pocket book with the city correspondents of Sir Willliam Forbes's bank, and now walked about with a light step, his blackthorn cudgel in his hand, and a glad light ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... men taking off their coats, the young girls slipping off their cuffs and hanging them on the blackthorn bushes; then they took up their positions and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... England had this characteristic. When in 1752 the New Style was substituted for the Old, making Christmas fall twelve days earlier, folks were curious to see what the thorns would do. At Quainton in Buckinghamshire two thousand people, it is said, went out on the new Christmas Eve to view a blackthorn which had the Christmas blossoming habit. As no sign of buds was visible they agreed that the new Christmas could not be right, and refused to keep it. At Glastonbury itself nothing |269| happened on December 24, but on January 5, the right ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... warm morn when winter Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs, So dark in the bare wood, when glistening In the sunshine were white with coming buds, Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks Had violets ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... inquired of by two several and distinct people as to your coming. Ah! you needn't open your bright eyes at me, because I shall not tell you. Only let me ask you have no notion of fencing off, my Queechy rose, with a hedge of blackthorn, or anything of that ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... like a coward," answered the stranger, "for thou standest there with a good yew bow to shoot at my heart, while I have nought in my hand but a plain blackthorn staff wherewith ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... silver bloom embroidered on the covering of the settle by the hearth, and sparkled against a silver and crystal lantern hanging in the chimney. And between the cracks on the walls Young Gerard had stuck wands of gold and silver palm and branches of snowy blackthorn, and on the floor was a dish full of celandine and daisies, and a broken jar of small wild daffodils. And the child knew that all these things were the treasures of ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... o'clock P.M., after witnessing some sport, S——r gave the word to mount, and off we set for Mr. Oliver's. An hour's ride brought us within his domain, where lofty deer-fences, blackthorn hedge-rows, well-made drives, and carefully cultivated land, formed a striking change from the wild but beautiful forest-country through which ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... rough, open land there that gave from the covert edge, with scattered brake-fern and a stream in the midst and a lot of blackthorn scrub round about. A noted place for a woodcock, also a snipe, and a spot from which trespassers were warned very careful. So Samuel took a look over to see that all was quiet, and there, in the midst, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... sown thick with creamy daisies and yellow buttercups. Down in a marshy hollow they caught a glimpse of a carpet of golden kingcups, and once they passed a tiny dell in whose very heart an azure mist whispered of bluebells; while the blackthorn and the may made the air fragrant for miles. The birds were singing their hearts out in the mellow sunshine, and now and again the cuckoo's call came floating over the meadows from copse ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... used to it, sor. But just a frindly wurrud. I'd be civil, for they've an ugly way of handling things here, being savage-like. There isn't a wan among 'em as knows the vartue of a bit o' blackthorn, but they handle their shpears dangerously, and ivery man's got his nasty ugly skewer in his belt—you know, his kris—and it's out wid it, and ructions before ye know ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... as high as a man. At the summit of the bank were the remains of a wattled fence, which had formerly surrounded some garden, and in front of it were visible the wide leaves of the burdock, from among which rose blackthorn, and sunflowers lifting their heads high above all the rest. Here the Tatar flung off her slippers and went barefoot, gathering her clothes up carefully, for the spot was marshy and full of water. Forcing ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to go with me. I agreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting in a corner of the car, with his Glengarry pulled down over his shaggy eyebrows, and his knotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn that had a head as big ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... stone, and a host of tiny and coloured creatures resume their game of an infinite general post in the bright air. The ivy especially is a little continent of life where-ever it grows. Clambering over a wall or climbing up among the sloes in a blackthorn it attracts bee and wasp and fly, blue fly and grey fly and green fly, to graze on the pollen of its late flowers. The ivy is the last of the plants to flower, and insects come to it as from the ends of the earth in rejoicing myriads. Among the berries in the hedges the birds, too, rejoice. ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... indeed. What a haven in such weather as the present! Now, Captain Anerley, I entreat you to consider whether it is wise to take the thorn so from the rose. If I had so sweet a place, I would plant brambles, briers, blackthorn, furze, crataegus, every kind of spinous growth, inside my gates, and never let anybody lop them. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... glasses and real wine of three kinds, namely, blackthorn wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours out, but the bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out. There is bread-and-butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny bit; and cakes to ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... night, when Nell Gorman an' her new husband, Andy Curtis, was snug an' warm in bed, an' fast asleep, an' everything quite, who should come to the door, sure enough, but Jim Soolivan himself, an' he beginned flakin' the door wid a big blackthorn stick he had, an' roarin' out like the divil to open the door, for he had a ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... legions pressing into the sky and obscuring the sun. It seemed as if the earth were cowering in their presence, as a partridge cowers before the hovering hawk. The blackthorn and juniper bushes called to caution with a low, swishing noise; the troubled dust hid in the corn, where the young ears whispered to each ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... spinosa).—It is believed that no hurt is so hard of healing as from a blackthorn. Also blackthorn winter is supposed to bring fresh cold in spring, when the bushes almost look as if ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... dance; but more company is desired, and Robin goes to fetch it. He tells the friends he asks that some one has been courting Marion, and they prudently resolve to bring, one his great pitchfork and another his good blackthorn. Meanwhile the Knight returns, and though ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... are called drupes, as those of the apple and pear form are called pomes, and those of the bramble, and some other tribes, berries. Our woods supply us with two sorts of plum, both edible—the sloe, or blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), and the wild bullace (P. institia.) Every one knows the sloe, at least every one who has spent any part of his youth amidst woodland scenes; but as there are some who, having been 'all their life in populous cities pent,' know but little of country delights, for their benefit ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... Cambridgemen, and the best litterateurs of England, do Wales and Cornwall, the Lakes and the Trossachs, to say nothing of Europe, dressed just as we are." "All right, old man, but I'm thinking I'll add a bandanna handkerchief and a blackthorn. They'll come in handy to carry the fossils over your shoulder. There now, I've forgot the printers' paper and the strap flower press for my specimens. True, there's Monday for that; but I'm afraid I'll have to shave the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... They told me my intent was to root up That well-grown yew, and plant i' the stead of it A wither'd blackthorn; and for that they vow'd To bury me alive. My husband straight With pickaxe 'gan to dig, and your fell duchess With shovel, like a fury, voided out The earth and scatter'd bones: Lord, how methought I could ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... glad, for she could not bear to think of anything being punished on such a lovely afternoon. The birds were singing, the hedges were covered with little green leaves, just bursting forth. Here and there a blackthorn bush was in full flower, and filled Jessie with delight. She sat very quiet, looking about her with a serious happy face, drinking it all in, and evidently thinking deeply. Her grandfather watched ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... earth all day among the flowers, Taking no thought of any other thing But their own hearts, for out of them they sing: Their songs are kindred to the blossom heads, Faint as the petals which the blackthorn sheds, And like the earth—not alien songs as ours. To them this greenness and this island peace Are life and death and happiness in one; Nor are they separate from the white sun, Or those warm winds which nightly wash the deep Or starlight in the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... distance, and so pursued a survey of meadow and woodland, yet without seeing what she sought. Beneath and beyond, separated from her standpoint by grasslands and a hedge of hazel, tangled thickets of blackthorn, of bracken, and of briar sank to the valley bottom. Therein wound tinkling Teign through the gorges of Fingle to the sea; and above it, where the land climbed upward on the other side, spread the Park of Whiddou, with expanses of sweet, stone-scattered herbage, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... P. SPINOSA.—Sloe, or Blackthorn. An indigenous, spiny shrub, with tiny white flowers; and P. spinosa flore-pleno has small, rosette-like flowers that are both ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink of the Cliffs—a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat, his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he carried—he knew the ground so well that he walked as if he could see (indeed, he saw more than I could, for while to me the breakers were only streaks of light, he spoke as if he was close to them on the wet weedy rocks), or I came on him lying by the edge, listening to the grumbling ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the rocky shelves no longer flaunt their splendid blue and purple, tempting the flower-gatherer to risk a broken neck; the poet's narcissus and the tall asphodel alike are gone; so are all the flowers of spring. The wild vine that clambers over the blackthorn, the maple and the hazel, all down the valley towards the Dordogne, shows here and there a crimson leaf; and the little path is fringed with high marjoram, whose blossoms revel amidst the hot stones, and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 'beke hym in an ovyn when ye bake, and let him cool and dry a four weeks or more.' The pith is taken out of him with a hot iron, and a yard of white hazel is similarly treated, also a fair shoot of blackthorn or crabtree for a top. The butt is bound with hoops of iron, the top is accommodated with a noose, a hair line is looped in the noose, and the angler is equipped. Splicing is not used, but the joints have holes to receive each other, and with this ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... with foliage so luxuriant, from the ground upwards, that it was impossible to distinguish the stem, and in every respect it presented the appearance of a tree in its prime, without a sign of decay. It belongs to the botanical class Prunus Spinosa, or blackthorn, and it was covered with berries at the time of our visit. These, however, were the evidence of a second efflorescence in the spring. The celebrity of the tree arises from the fact that every year ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... wand has had several names given to it. A common one was that of 'divining rod.' By the Germans it was called the 'wishing rod,' or 'wishing thorn,' which points to the fact that it was often cut from the blackthorn or sloe. It was supposed that the person who could use the magic rod most successfully was the seventh son of a seventh son, if such a person could be found. The wand, too, should not be cut from very old wood, but it must be more than a year old. Some ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Liverpool, except from the County Donegal, there were not so many from the northern province. The majority were from Connaught. They generally landed at the Clarence Dock, Liverpool, a wiry, hardy-looking lot, with frieze coats, corduroy breeches, clean white shirts with high collars, and blackthorn sticks. I have seen them filling the breadth of Prescot Street, as they left the town, marching up like an army on foot to the various parts of England they were bound for. This was before special cheap ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... the hundredth time, feeling them in a way as I feel the landscape, I walk home by the dear rock path girdling Fiesole, within sound of the chisels of the quarries. Blackthorn is now mixed in the bare purple hedgerows, and almond blossom, here and there, whitens the sere oak, and the black rocks above. These are the heights from which, as tradition has it, Florence descended, the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... indistinct with the transition to ground covered with fallen leaves. They had failed entirely as Green spoke, and he flung the light about in an effort to pick them up again. Then something met his eye on a spike of blackthorn, and he carefully picked off a thread of brown cloth. "We're done for to-night, I'm afraid," he said. "He's gone off the track and got into the wood. We'll get back, Malley, and try to find a room or somewhere to sleep near here. Then we can turn out with daylight. But first of all we must ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... the bare branch of an oak near by, and a blackbird, startled by the sight of a strange form squatting beside the brambles, sounded his shrill alarm and dipped across the clearing towards a clump of blackthorn bushes. As soon as she heard the blackbird's warning, the vixen vanished; but, presently reappearing, she trotted across the open space and sat beneath the thorns. For some minutes she remained motionless in the dark patch of shadow, listening intently; then, passing slowly down a narrow path, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... crouched in the bushes at the dark edge of the swamp road, with eyes that watched every glitter of the coins, and a hand that grasped a heavy cudgel of blackthorn, a man whose close-cropped hair and hard lined face belonged nowhere but within the ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... this treeless waste for an hour or more, when the ground began to be less rugged, and he came upon trees again, but thinly scattered, oak and ash and hornbeam not right great, with thickets of holly and blackthorn between them. The set of the ground was still steadily up to the east and north-east, and he followed it as one who wendeth an assured way. At last before him seemed to rise a wall of trees and thicket; ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the stone-quarry, following stone dikes and snow-filled ditches, and working their way through the thicket of blackthorn and juniper, behind which lay the rocks and "the Heath." They made their way right into the quarry, and tried in the darkness to find the place where the dross was thrown, for that would be ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... wrenched open the half-fastened shell to kiss her once more before they screwed her down for ever. I wonder would you do as much for me? I loved my mother, and that was fifty years ago. I wonder shall we meet again? That was on the first of May, a long-gone first of May. They threw branches of blackthorn bloom upon her coffin. Odd, very odd! But business, lad, business—what was it? Ah! I know," and his manner changed in a second and became hard and stern. "About Maria, have you come ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the edge of the cliffs the barking grew louder, and was recognisably 'Dolph's; and so they came to a wide shelving amphitheatre of turf overgrown with furze and blackthorn. It curved almost as smoothly as the slope of a crater, and shelved to a small semi-circular bay. There, on the edge of the tide, danced 'Dolph yelping; and there, knee-deep in water, facing him with lowered head, stood a magnificent stag—yes, the stag of ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Brita has sent me,' said Strong Ingmar, taking the basket from me. 'Come, let me show you what a fine house we've got here.' Then he took me into the hut where he and father lived. At the back was a rude stone, and the other walls were made up of branches of spruce and blackthorn. 'Well, my lad, you never guessed that your father had a royal castle like this in the forest, eh?' said Strong Ingmar. 'Here are walls that keep out both storm and frost,' he laughed, thrusting his arm clean through the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... know—but I know that I have been inquired of by two several and distinct people as to your coming. Ah, you needn't open your bright eyes at me, because I shall not tell you. Only let me ask,—you have no notion of fencing off my Queechy rose with a hedge of blackthorn,—or anything of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... begin it at least a month later. Our present May Day is nearly a fortnight earlier than before the New Style was introduced, which is the reason why old traditions of May Day merry-makings appear unseasonable; and probably the promoters of summer time have not heard of "blackthorn winter" and "whitethorn winter," which, in the country, we experience regularly every year in April ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... strewed the park, the sharp-leaved holly stood out boldly, and the exquisite white thorn, all in flower, shot up to three and four times a man's height; below, the heather grew close and green to blossom in the summer-time; and in the deeper, lonelier places the blackthorn and hoe ran wild, and the dog-rose in wild confusion; the alder and the gorse too, the honeysuckle and ivy, climbed up over rocks and stems; you might see a laurel now and then, and bilberry bushes by thousands, and bracken everywhere in ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... 'It is never too soon to teach them to obey the rules of a public place, and to be considerate of older people.' She seemed awestruck. But when she found her tongue she stammered, 'Sure, ma'am, I've tould thim three times this day already that when their father comes he'll bate thim with a blackthorn stick!' ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there bounced, from a cupboard that Andrew Coffey had never noticed before, a man. And the man was in a towering rage. But it wasn't that. And he carried as fine a blackthorn as you'd wish to crack a man's head with. But it wasn't that either. But when my grandfather clapped eyes on him, he knew him for Patrick Rooney, and all the world knew he'd gone overboard, fishing one night long ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.) |
