"Distaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of feminine habits had Clorinda been from her childhood. She disdained to put her hand to the needle and the distaff. She renounced every soft indulgence, every timid retirement, thinking that virtue could be safe wherever it went in its own courageous heart; and so she armed her countenance with pride, and pleased herself with making ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... fusil it would be impossible. When the fusil, instead of being a mere heraldic bearing, has to be used as the shape of a shield for the actual use of the painter or engraver, it must of necessity be widened into the lozenge; and as the latter is probably only the same distaff with little more wool upon it, there seems no objection to the arrangement. BROCTUNA is too good an antiquary not to know on recollection that the "vyings of widows" had little to do with funeral arrangements in those days. Procrustes, the herald, came down at all great funerals, and regulated ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... kings, take the next head of human arts—Weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess—honoured of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king—"She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... the family there was no trace of that mingling in young Peter's physiognomy. Indeed the changes of time had transferred all the recognizable aspects of that early blood-line to the one branch represented by Bas Rowlett, possibly because the Doanes had, on the distaff side, introduced new blood with ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a bigger monster, "the father", came ashore, and he also was slain. But the most powerful enemy had yet to be dealt with. "The next night a Big Hag came ashore, and the tooth in the front of her mouth would make a distaff. 'You killed my husband and son,' she said." Finn acknowledged that he did, and they began to fight. After a prolonged struggle, in which Finn was almost overcome, the Hag fell and her head was ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... more effect than the negotiations of La Tremoille. During this fruitless labor amongst the French the Duke of Bedford sent for five thousand men from England, who came and settled themselves at Paris. One division of this army had a white standard, in the middle of which was depicted a distaff full of cotton; a half-filled spindle was hanging to the distaff; and the field, studded with empty spindles, bore this inscription: "Now, fair one, come!" Insult to Joan was accompanied by redoubled war against France. Joan, saddened and wearied by the position ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in Shropshire special care was taken to put away any suds or "back-lee" for washing purposes, and no spinning might be done during the Twelve Days.{46} It was said elsewhere that if any flax were left on the distaff, the Devil would come ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of hills occupy both sides of our path, and the fine level road is adorned with a beautiful red flower named Bolcamaria. The markets or sleeping-places are well supplied with provisions by great numbers of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with a spindle and distaff, exactly like those which were in use among the ancient Egyptians. A woman is scarcely ever seen going to the fields, though with a pot on her head, a child on her back, and the hoe over her shoulder, but she is employed in this way. The cotton was brought ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... from her lips, when there came into her chamber the three unerring Fates who spin the destinies of men. White-robed and garlanded, they stood beside the babe, and with unwearied fingers drew out the lines of his untried life. Clotho held the golden distaff in her hand, and twirled and twisted the delicate thread. Lachesis, now sad, now hopeful, with her long white fingers held the hour-glass, and framed her lips to say, 'It is enough.' And Atropos, blind and unpitying ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... Eaux-Perdues. Need I relate what happened then? It is well known how the Princess Aurore, wandering one day through the castle, came to the top of a keep, where, in a garret, she found a dear old woman, all alone, plying her distaff. She had never heard of the King's regulations, forbidding the use ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... flax; O happy they! Each sure of burial in her native land, And none left desolate a-bed for France! One wak'd to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lull'd the parent's infancy: Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectur'd them Old tales of Troy and Fesole and Rome. A Salterello and Cianghella we Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... bewilder Johnny, and make him believe that fairy tales might be true, after all, for how could he know that the strange woman was an Italian servant, in her native dress, with a distaff in her hand? After pausing a moment, to rub his eyes, he took another look, and made fresh discoveries by twisting his head about. A basket of oranges stood near the Princess, a striped curtain hung from a limb of the tree to keep the wind off, and ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... in the Dragoon Guards,—was of much the same order; a black hunter with racing-blood in his loins and withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his 'scutcheon on the distaff side from a plebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain on his otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given him her massive shoulders, so that he was in some sense a gainer ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... kept in order to proceed by degrees, probably contains some demand more difficult to grant than that of yielding to a child scarcely a year old a crown which belongs to me by birthright, and to abandon my sceptre to take a distaff." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... marched to one of the gates and made to abjure the City for the remainder of her life. A procurer or procuress was also set in the thewe to the accompaniment of music, with a "distaf with towen"—i.e., a distaff dressed with flax—in his or her hand; and the transgressor was made to serve as a public spectacle for such time as the Mayor and Aldermen deemed fit. A priest detected in the company of a loose ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... he whispered, "I count them not a fly. They may find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to spin. Stand thou ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... after. So, wouldn't it be better to spare these arms of ours, now that they are growing old? You will always find something to occupy your time about the house;—there'll be no lack of furniture and things to mend, and I'll be more than ever beside you with my distaff ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... She held the distaff which she bore in her hand (for she had been spinning) as if it were a spear; her limbs were goodly and shapely, and she trod the thick grass of the Vale with a kind of wary firmness, as though foemen might be lurking nearby. The Sun-beam smiled ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... sherris and his own good feeling—"for it's a well-written log that has no blots; but hang it, as I said before, I never could spin a yarn like my friend Robin here, either from the wheel, which I mean to typify the head—or the distaff, which, be it understood, signifies the heart: So here goes—" and, with a trembling hand, and a sparkling eye, the generous Springall drained the deep tankard, to the health of his ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... slowly out of the town towards some low huts scattered in the suburbs. At the door of a hovel hut, an old woman with a benevolent countenance sat spinning cotton. Mr. Park made signs that he was hungry, on which she immediately laid down her distaff, invited him to the hut, and set before him a dish of kouskous, of which he made a comfortable meal. In return for her kindness Mr. Park gave her a pocket handkerchief, begging at the same time a little corn for his horse, which ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... our masters, could hardly write them at all. In Greek poetry of the great ages I only remember one piece which can be called a model—the AEolic verses that Theocritus wrote to accompany the gift of the ivory distaff. It was a present, you remember, to the wife of his friend Nicias, the physician of Miletus. The Greeks of that age kept their women in almost Oriental reserve. One may doubt whether Nicias would have liked it if Theocritus had sent, instead ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... and a sickness seemed instilled in her very blood, and in a dubious faintness she was conscious of his lips. He hardly heard the words he uttered, so loud was the clatter of his thoughts, and he seemed to see the trail of his destiny unwinding itself from the distaff in the hands of Fate. He was frightened, and an impulse strove to force him to his feet, and hence, with a rapid good-bye, to the door. But instead, he leaned forth his hands, he sought her, but she shrank away, and turning her face from ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Lord Wharncliffe, the loss of domestic manufactures; we would prefer one housewife skilled in the distaff and the dairy—home-bred, and home-taught, and home-faithful—to a factory full of creatures who live amid the eternal roll, and clash, and glimmer of spindles and rollers, watching with aching eyes the thousand twirls and capable of but one act—tying the broken threads. We abhor ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... strings of maize and bunches of dried vegetables that hung from the roof and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's orders, on a supper ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... from the distaff of Omphale may be stronger than the club of Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet, and yet unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... now indeed a man. Penelope spoke no word to him, for a new thought had come into her mind. She turned round on the stairs and went back with her hand-maids to the chamber where her loom and her distaff were. And as she went up the stairway and away from them her wooers muttered one to the other that she would soon have to choose one of them ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... you have read Rob by this time. I think he smells of the cramp. Above all, I had too much flax on my distaff; and as it did not consist with my patience or my plan to make a fourth volume, I was obliged at last to draw a rough, coarse, and hasty thread. But the book is well liked here, and has reeled off in great style. I have two stories on the anvil, far superior to Rob Roy in point ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... over with Leonard Calvert, received a grant of the land—a thousand acres, then. We have not lost an acre in all these generations, but rather gained a third more. There are fifteen hundred acres now. All this must 'fall to the distaff' and go out of the family unless my daughter should marry her cousin, Leonidas Force. He also has recently inherited a considerable estate, joining this, and, like this, with a long sea front. It is not always ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... will not be ashamed to work for their subsistence. We were forcibly reminded of the oft alleged objection to emancipation in the United States, that it would impoverish many excellent families in the South, and drive delicate females to the distaff and the wash-tub, whose hands have never been used to any thing—rougher than the cowhide. Much sympathy has been awakened in the North by such appeals, and vast numbers have been led by them to conclude that it is better for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... with fortitude the influence of counsels which she believed fatal to her husband. He indeed spoke rarely, and seldom confidentially, with her on politics or public affairs. "Mind your distaff or your needle," was with him a common phrase. The individuals who applied themselves with most perseverance in support of the hereditary question were Lucien, Roederer, Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely, and Fontanel. Their efforts were ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of washing over. Dorcas had nearly finished her "stent" on the little wheel. As she sat by the open door, diligently trotting her foot, and softly pulling the last flax from her distaff, her glance went hastily and often towards the setting sun. She could see beyond the sloping orchard, no longer loaded with fruit, the Great Meadows, extending along the banks of the Connecticut. She could see on the eastern side great white ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... and woodblock engravings some curious illustrations are met with showing Englishwomen using the distaff. St. Distaff's Day was formerly the 7th of January, for it was then that the women resumed work after the Christmas festivities were over. The distaff and the spindle belonged to an age little understood now, and the occupations of the women of that date are almost forgotten. The spinning ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... state of nakedness, lay sprawling, as if to be crushed by the hoofs of the first passing horse. Occasionally, indeed, when such a consummation seemed inevitable, a watchful old grandam, with her close cap, distaff, and spindle, rushed like a sibyl in frenzy out of one of these miserable cells, dashed into the middle of the path, and snatching up her own charge from among the sunburnt loiterers, saluted him with a sound cuff, and transported him back to his dungeon, the little white-headed ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... old spinning wheel, the clock reel, the linen wheel with its distaff, your grandfather's knapsack and cartridge-box and Continental coat, your great-aunt's Leghorn bonnet and side-saddle, or pillion, great files of the village newspapers—the "Morning Cry" and "Midnight ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... room, but one came close and began to squirm as though she were "setting" a mouse. Suddenly she pounced, seized the old woman's food bag from her feet, swept it on to the floor, and disappeared with it beneath the dais, where all the rest of the cats followed. The old woman, who had been plying distaff and spindle the while, let out a yell of fury and half disappeared beneath the platform. We all roared with laughter, while beneath us the cats spat and the old woman cursed, beating about with the handle of her distaff till she had rescued her dinner. She backed ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... of what he has inherited from the centuries. He is the finished product of those centuries. His speech, his manner, his dress, his ideas along social and political and industrial lines have been fashioned upon the distaff of time. He lands upon American soil and at once there is a strangeness in the atmosphere that awes him, it is a new world in truth and the newness of it repels him and drives him back upon himself. The faintest link between the new world and the old is a Godsend to him. It gives him courage, ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... subject, For his opinion's sake, his hate and love, Sets property and life upon a cast; When civil war hangs out her bloody flag, Each private end is drowned in party zeal. The husbandman forsakes his plough, the wife Neglects her distaff; children, and old men, Don the rude garb of war; the citizen Consigns his town to the devouring flames, The peasant burns the produce of his fields; And all to injure or advantage thee, And to achieve the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Tigernach, and the bards of Ulster, rapt into visions of the future:—'When a king of Erin shall flee at the voice of a woman, then shall the distaff and spindle conquer whom the sword and buckler shall not subdue.' That woman is yon heretic queen. A usurper, an intruder on our birthright. Never were the O'Neales conquered but by woman! I have lingered here when the war-cry hath rung from the shores ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... beehives—in a word, of all that a rich farmer like my father could possess. I engaged and dismissed the servants, and was the stewardess of the estate. The spare hours that were left from the management of the farm I spent with the needle, the lace cushion, and the distaff, or else I would read some good hook ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... cried, in a haughty tone. 'Clothe me more beautifully than mortal maid was ever clad before, so that I may find favour in the prince's sight and become the bride of the castle. I would that I were done for ever with the spindle and the distaff.' ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... says, 'I am he, who measures out the long year, who beholds all things, {and} through whom the earth sees all things; the eye, {in fact}, of the universe. Believe me, thou art pleasing to me.' She is affrighted; and in her alarm, both her distaff and her spindle fall from her relaxed fingers. Her very fear becomes her; and, he, no longer delaying, returns to his true shape, and his wonted beauty. But the maiden, although startled at the unexpected sight, overcome by the beauty of the God,[39] {and} dismissing {all} complaints, submits ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... universally reduced to servitude. A free woman who intermarried with a slave condemned herself and offspring to perpetual bondage. Among the Ripuarian Franks, a free woman thus disgracing herself, was girt with a sword and a distaff. Choosing the one, she was to strike her husband dead; choosing the other, she adopted the symbol of slavery, and became ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... trace, comes GAMBOL in place; And to make my tale the shorter, My son Hercules, tane out of Distaff lane, But an active ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... trimmed, Agnes took it on her arm. Elsie raised and poised on her head the great square basket that contained her merchandise, and began walking erect and straight down the narrow rocky stairs that led into the gorge, holding her distaff with its white flax in her hands, and stepping as easily as if she bore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... rose hastily, laid down her distaff, and opening the door, courtesied low to the little girl of ten years old ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... they had so laughed at a few hours before. In most cases the laugh was turned against them; for when it became known that a man was hesitating, his more zealous neighbours sent him a present of a knitting-needle or a distaff, to shew their contempt of him. There was no resisting this; so that the fear of ridicule contributed its fair contingent to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... grandmothers' learning consisted of yore In spreading their generous boards; In twisting the distaff, or mopping the floor, And obeying the will of their lords. Now, misses may reason, and think, and debate, Till unquestioned submission is quite ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... state of the gutter-grating in Little Distaff-lane has, at length, awakened the attention of the parish authorities. For several days past it has been choked by an accumulation of rubbish, but we are now enabled, on good authority, to state that the parish-beadle has been directed to poke it with his staff, which it is hoped will have the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... of all good housewives described by the prudent mother of King Lemuel, it should be said of the emigrant's wife, "She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." "She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands." "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... relapse. At jack and the box. At jog breech, or prick him At the queens. forward. At the trades. At knockpate. At heads and points. At the Cornish c(h)ough. At the vine-tree hug. At the crane-dance. At black be thy fall. At slash and cut. At ho the distaff. At bobbing, or flirt on the At Joan Thomson. nose. At the bolting cloth. At the larks. At ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... cork-bauks of herring-nets, and the lacing of sails. Most of the sails themselves were made, not of canvas, but of a woollen stuff, the thread of which, greatly harder and stouter than that of common plaid, had been spun on the distaff and spindle. As hemp and flax must have been as rare commodities of old in the western Highlands, and the Hebrides generally, as they both were thirty years ago in Gairloch, whereas moss-fir must have been abundant, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... were made of the wool from their own flocks. First the wool had to be spun into yarn. They did not even have spinning wheels in those days, so a spinner took a handful of wool on the end of a stick called a distaff, which she held in her left hand. With her right hand she hooked into the wool a spindle. This was a round, pointed piece of wood about ten inches long with a hook at the pointed end, and with a small piece of stone fastened to the other to give momentum in the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... to the chase Her kilted nymphs, her hounds with eyeballs burning; And here was Hercules in woman's dress, His warlike hand the peaceful distaff turning. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tender one of love. Yet, willing to try her longer, he replied—"Sweet Princess, not content that I have risked my life to preserve yours, would you have me sacrifice my honour, give over the chase of dazzling glory, lay all my warlike trophies in a woman's lap, and change my truncheon for a distaff? No, Sabra, George of England was born in a country where true chivalry is nourished, and hath sworn to see the world, as far as the lamp of heaven can lend him light, before he is fettered in the golden chains of wedlock. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... Piper, softly. "'T is because of the darkness, I'm thinking. From the distaff of Eternity, you take the thread of your life, but you're sitting in the night, and God meant you to be a spinner in the sun. When the day breaks for you, you'll be finding the loose link to set ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... tongues out; behind the cart the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... thee be not of over-sorrowful heart. No man shall slay me ere the time appointed for my death hath come. Go home and busy thyself with loom and distaff and see to the work of thy maidens. But war is for us men, and of all those who dwell in Troyland, most of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... both father and son were admirably portrayed. The strong Syrian faces were mellowed by the ruddy gleams of sunset. A tame kid was gambolling behind them, and two women were grinding corn, with the millstone between them. On the flat white roof of the house, another woman had just laid aside her distaff in a hurry. The father's arms with their gold bracelets were clasping the gaunt, sharp shoulders of ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... tells us of Margaret's favourite occupations, mentioning that when she was alone in her room she more often held a book in her hand than a distaff, a pen than a spindle, and the ivory of her tablets than a needle. He then adds: "And if she applied herself to tapestry or other needlework, such as was to her a pleasant occupation, she had beside her some one who read to her, either from a historian or ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... she got, as the saying goes, "over head and ears." Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red slippers for the object of her new affections, and were not these so very suitable to one who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero, did not need them to be applied ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... wide, inexpensive straw hats of various and astonishing colours. Woman he would have found in beautiful shades of blue, in such light garments "woven wind" as Theocritus speaks of when he presents the wife of his doctor with a new ivory distaff. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... maiden, To a seat within his snow-sledge. But the Maid or Beauty answered, Answered thus the great magician: I will go with that one only That will make me ship or shallop, From the splinters of my spindle, From the fragments of my distaff, In the waters launch the vessel, Set the little ship a-floating, Using not the knee to push it, Using not the arm to move it, Using not the hand to touch it, Using not the foot to turn it, Using nothing to propel it." Spake the skilful Wainamoinen, These the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... little private flock was being tended by a girl, one spinning with a distaff, another seated on a wall and intently making lace. This last, when we addressed her, leaped up in a panic and put out her arms, like a person swimming, to keep us at a distance, and it was some seconds before we could persuade her of the honesty of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Greve, grumble, Greve! Spin, spin, my distaff, spin her rope for the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow. What a beautiful hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Vanvre. The thief hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope. Grumble, Greve, bark, Greve! To see the dissolute wench ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Achilles, laden with that huge bunch of materials for Lady Mabel's hortus siccus, thinks himself like Hercules with the distaff. To me he looks like a florist's apprentice, selling his flowers at a penny a bunch. It must be confessed though that the fellow has talents and tact. How completely has he contrived to shut out rivalry, by availing himself of my lady's weakness in imagining herself a great botanist, and providing ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... but unsteady circle. Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman's round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of flax; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unwearied, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind's eye particularly ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... was understood to be a Pole in exile, though his title to that distinction could only have been on the side of the distaff, since his father's descent from a ducal family of Venice was not denied; but neither nationality nor expatriation was very obvious upon him. At first sight you would have supposed him a sallow Englishman, spare of flesh and too narrow in the chest; you might have put down his dead complexion and ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... both the religious and the political motive for silence ceased to operate, and there were, just then, evident motives for speech. There was no hope that Catharine would have a son, and the secret that a queen may reign by her own right, that the nation may be ruled by the distaff, had not been divulged in England. In foreign policy and in home policy alike, there were interests which favoured a new marriage, if its legitimacy could ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... this manufacture has been wonderfully rapid. In the time of Henry VIII., the spinning wheel came into use in England, superseding the spindle and distaff, which may still be seen in the south of France and Italy, and in India, where no other tools are used. In the same reign Manchester ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... bright-red dress and her feet were bare. Her black hair hung down her back. Her eyes were the color of a topaz. Her form was tall and straight. She carried a distaff under her arm and looked as if she had just come from following ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... character of being a cold and dispassionate woman. And this was the more remarkable because on the distaff-side she was of Spanish descent, and might reasonably have been supposed to have inherited the instincts of that passionate and hot-tempered nation. She never quarrelled as the brothers had done, but her eyes narrowed for an instant with a trick that was characteristic of her when she heard ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Egypt, where is the chiefest store of wealth in the houses. He gave two silver baths to Menelaus, and tripods twain, and ten talents of gold. And besides all this, his wife bestowed on Helen lovely gifts; a golden distaff did she give, and a silver basket with wheels beneath, and the rims thereof were finished with gold. This it was that the handmaid Phylo bare and set beside her, filled with dressed yarn, and across it was laid a distaff charged with wool of violet blue. So Helen ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... Mr. Vere, smiling mysteriously, "he had other tow on his distaff last night. Have you not heard young Elliot of the Heugh-foot has had his house burnt, and his cattle driven away, because he refused to give up his arms to some honest men that think of ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand, held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark, where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling cow-shed, filled ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... to weed thy pretty arbours, Maudge; and, peradventure, I may even essay to sing a bass to thy sweet ballad of "Lustye May, with Flora Queen;" and such a domesticated creature shall I be that, like Hercules, you may see me, ere long, ply the distaff—a pretty sight for Adam ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... False coward, wreak thy wif; By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... shuddering reverence; I was much impressed with the idea of your strength. Yet now I understand that you and your cord and your threats all depend from a mere cobweb. It seems to me Clotho should be the one to boast: she has you dangling from her distaff, like a sprat at the end ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Jupiter to send him a sign that that was the site meant for his city. In the morning he found standing in front of his tent a wooden statue of the goddess Minerva, also called Pallas. The figure was three cubits high. In its right hand it held a spear, and in the left, a distaff and spindle. ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... interesting to notice that in the early representations of Athena, while she is very warlike in her bearing and raises her lance in her right hand, she also carries in her left the distaff and the spindle and the lamp of knowledge. In the later art of Phidias she is still stern and severe, but her face also expresses dignity and grandeur of thought and character. Later still, her warlike attributes are made less prominent: the shield rests on the ground, and the lance ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... to the side of the bed. A distaff was leaning against the wall, And Mr. King, with arms at length, Gave it a swing, with all his strength, And crashed it full at the villain's head, And dropped him, pistols and daggers and all. Then sword in hand, he raged through the door, And there were three hundred savages more, All hungry ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... all; I was thinking at the time of something else. She is a woman, good Orange, and all women expect that every one shall submit passively to their gentle yoke; that every Hercules shall lay aside his lion's skin, assume the distaff, and swell their train; and, because they are themselves peaceably inclined, imagine forsooth, that the ferment which seizes a nation, the storm which powerful rivals excite against one another, may be allayed by one soothing word, ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... concord. "These orbs in their motion could not but produce a certain sound or note, depending upon their distances and velocities; and as these were regulated by harmonic laws, they necessarily formed as a whole a complete musical scale." "In the whorl of the distaff of necessity there are eight concentric whorls. These whorls represent respectively the sun and moon, the five planets, and the fixed stars. On each whorl sits a siren singing. Their eight tones make ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the Philosopher. "Certain trades and professions, it is curious to note, tend to be perpetuated in the female line. The sovereign profession among bees and ants is always female, and publicans also descend on the distaff side. You will have noticed that every publican has three daughters of extraordinary charms. Lacking these signs we would do well to look askance at such a man's liquor, divining that in his brew there will be an undue percentage of water, for if his primogeniture ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... unfortunately too often committed in former days, and which is perhaps sometimes committed still. Let us not fall into the mistake of fancying that everything antiquarian, which we do not see at first sight the exact use of, must necessarily be something very mysterious. Old distaff-whorls, armlets, etc., have, in this illogical spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic horse-harness, discovered in sepulchral ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... I not? Oh! if it must be so, and these rash slaves Will not be ruled with less, I'll use the sword Till they shall wish it turned into a distaff. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... goodly amount of plain cloth. Perhaps, Mr. Walden, you may have noticed the spinning-school building in Long Acre,[23] near the Common—a large brick building with the figure of a woman holding a distaff." ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... in and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and cotton, would have pronounced it ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.(348) In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... this stick is Distaff, a word which is derived from the Low German—diesse, the bunch of flax on a distaff, and staff. Originally it would be the staff on which the tow or flax was fastened, and from which the thread was drawn. The modern representative of the spindle with the twisted thread wound on it is the "cop," and the intermittent actions of first putting twist in the thread and ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... the misfortune foretold by the old Fairy, caused immediately proclamation to be made, whereby everybody was forbidden, on pain of death, to spin with a distaff and spindle, or to have so much as any spindle in their houses. About fifteen or sixteen years after, the King and Queen being gone to one of their houses of pleasure, the young Princess happened one day ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, And maketh strong her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; Her lamp goeth not out by night, She layeth her hands to the distaff, And her hands hold the spindle. She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, She is not afraid of the snow for her household, For all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... him, telling him she would marry him if he could peel a block of sandstone and cut a whip-handle from ice without making a single splinter. And Wainamoinen did both these things, but still the maiden refused to go until he had performed a third task. This was to make from the splinters of her distaff a little ship, and to launch it into the water ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... wet afternoon was wearing on, beguiled by the young girls as best it might be, with the spindle and distaff, and incessant chatter and laugh, save when they joined their voices in some popular chant. Signora Martina was delivering fresh flax to the spinners; Marietta, the maid, was busy about the fire, in provident forethought for supper; and Beppo, a barefooted, weather-beaten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... there were three carts, twelve horses, and six men all in a snarl, while a dozen women stood at their doors and gave advice. One was washing a lettuce, another dressing her baby, a third twirling her distaff, and a fourth with her little bowl of soup, which she ate in public while gesticulating so frantically that her sabots [Footnote: Sabots: wooden ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... mother, or speak of what you understand," said Hamish, much irritated, "and that is of the distaff and the spindle." ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... came. Men said he saw strange visions Which none beside might see, And that strange sounds were in his ears 215 Which none might hear but he. A woman[34] fair and stately, But pale as are the dead, Oft through the watches of the night Sat spinning by his bed. 220 And as she plied the distaff, In a sweet voice and low, She sang of great old houses, And fights fought long ago. So spun she, and so sang she, 225 Until the east was grey, Then pointed to her bleeding breast, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... girl, "Now see! which is the better, my work or yours?" And Arachne was obliged to confess that she had been defeated and put to shame. But the goddess was not thoroughly satisfied; to punish Arachne, she touched her lightly with the distaff, saying, "Spin forever!" and thereupon Arachne was changed into a spider, which forever spins and weaves perishable films of perishable shiny thread. Poetically we still ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... My father, who is Warder of this tower, Bade me come hither and ask thee if thou wouldst That I should hold thy distaff, or might ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... woman rose, and not a word said she, Without a pause her distaff laid aside, And left the cradle where the orphan cried, Took up the jar, and with ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... never! All the day long he idleth away his time with the sons of the quarter, vagabonds like himself, and his father (O regret of me!) died not save of dolour for him. And I also am now in piteous plight: I spin cotton and toil at my distaff, night and day, that I may earn a couple of scones of bread which we eat together. This is his condition, O my brother-in-law; and, by the life of thee, he cometh not near me save at meal-times and none other. Indeed, I am thinking to lock the house-door nor ever open to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... undoing: for when Christina heard of it, she persecuted him to death. Sophia the empress, Justinian's wife, broke a bitter jest upon Narsetes the eunuch, a famous captain then disquieted for an overthrow which he lately had: that he was fitter for a distaff and to keep women company, than to wield a sword, or to be general of an army: but it cost her dear, for he so far distasted it, that he went forthwith to the adverse part, much troubled in his thoughts, caused the Lombards to rebel, and thence procured many miseries ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... though white in colour, and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark, to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the salmon coming ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the banks of Nile Where bloom'd the waving flax on Delta's isle, Pleased ISIS taught the fibrous stems to bind, And part with hammers from the adhesive rind; With locks of flax to deck the distaff-pole, And whirl with graceful bend the dancing spole. In level lines the length of woof to spread, And dart the shuttle through the parting thread. 260 So ARKWRIGHT taught from Cotton-pods to cull, And stretch in lines ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... with linen, piece by piece, to the very top, full of relics of the poor past, its contents increasing gradually in quantity and in quality, the first visible symptom of comfortable circumstances, of wealth in a house. Again, that woman always had the distaff in her hand from morning till night, and if the house-keeper was indignant, the spinster could have wept as at a profanation. Finally, unable to endure it longer, she rose, abandoned her patient, watchful ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... island with a cottage; the grounds are highly cultivated and much of the land has been reclaimed from the water. The two birds are turtle-doves, and the three figures on the bridge are the Mandarin's daughter with a distaff, nearest the cottage, the lover with a box is shown in the middle, and nearest the willow-tree is the Mandarin ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... sent the sting of his enthusiasm upon them, and has pushed it to a sort of madness, a madness which imitates the true Thiasus. Forced to have the form without the profit of his worship, the whole female population, leaving distaff and spindle, and headed by the three princesses, have deserted the town, and are lying encamped on the bare rocks, or under the pines, among the solitudes of Cithaeron. And it is just at this point that ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... only still more beautiful from her modesty; and Nourgehan was charmed when he saw the sage who had proposed the question agree that she had answered with her usual justness, when she said that it was a Chestnut. She answered the third without hesitation, that it was a Distaff. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... swung to and fro to the tune of a weird Kurdish song. Behind one of the tents, on a primitive weaving-machine, some of them were making tent-roofing and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment. All seemed very domestic and peaceful except the Kurdish dogs, which set upon us with loud, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... good dames handling The spindle and the flax.... One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lulled the parents' infancy; Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectured them Old tales of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... extraneous impurities before the process of reduction is commenced. In all the minor details of the mill there has been the same marked change, until the modern merchant mill of to-day no more resembles that of twenty-five years ago than does the modern cotton mill the old-fashioned distaff. The change has extended into the winter wheat sections, and no mill in the United States can hope to hold its place in the markets unless it is provided with the many improvements in machinery and processes which have resulted from the experiments ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Mother's loom pounding away hour after hour in the chamber of an outbuilding where she was weaving a carpet, or cloth. I used to help do some of the quilling—running the yarn or linen thread upon spools to be used in the shuttles. The distaff, the quill-wheel, the spinning-wheel, the reel, were very familiar to me as a boy; so was the crackle, the swingle, the hetchel, for Father grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our shirts and summer trousers, and for towels and sheets. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... glimpse of the times: the beflagged ship from India lying in the Tagus, the modest dinner (a panela cosida) of the rich lavrador, the supper of bread and wine, shellfish and cherries bought in Lisbon's celebrated Ribeira market, the Lisbon Jew's dinner of kid and cucumber, the distaff bought by the shepherd at Santarem as a present for his love, the rustic gifts of acorns, bread and bacon, the shepherdess' simple dowry or the more considerable dowry of a girl somewhat higher in society ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... sixteen years old he was sent for a year to [Christ Church] Oxford, but he did not like the place, and thought (in the words of his father) that the 'vigour of his mind languished in the pursuit of classical elegance like Hercules at the distaff, and sighed to be removed to the robuster exercise of the medical school of Edinburgh.' He stayed three years at Edinburgh, working hard at his medical studies, and attending 'with diligence all the sick poor of the parish of Waterleith, and supplying them with ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and buzzards, with eighteen open mouths to feed. Look at the bee, and at the beaver, my good man, and learn to be a provider. Why, Ishmael! I believe my soul," she continued, dropping the tow she was twisting on a distaff, "the man is in that tent ag'in! More than half his time is ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... broad Tuscan hat with its old-fashioned black velvet—for she would never give in to the modern innovations of flowers and ostrich feathers—held her distaff in her hand, and as she twisted the spindle and drew out the thread evenly, she thought with satisfaction of the ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... only cultivation to raise it to perfection and amount. The natives manufacture from it a narrow cloth, which is made from thread, spun in a manner similar to the distaff. ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... am personally interested in the exclusiveness of the Order, my connection with the Brooks of Brookcotes being on the distaff side. My mother was Sir Robert's only sister. My father was a military man—3rd Buffs—died when I was twelve or thirteen years of age. Sir Robert was a confirmed bachelor, and I was his only nephew. Now you ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... arts. First was she to teach earthly men the fashioning of war chariots and cars fair-wrought with bronze. And she teaches to tender maidens in the halls all goodly arts, breathing skill into their minds. Nor ever doth laughter-loving Aphrodite conquer in desire Artemis of the Golden Distaff, rejoicing in the sound of the chase, for the bow and arrow are her delight, and slaughter of the wild beasts on the hills: the lyre, the dance, the clear hunting halloo, and shadowy glens, and cities ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang |
