"Fife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kind. The brass is a little too loud; the wood a little too muffled; the strings—some of the strings are invariably broken. I know a big man who is nothing but a big drum; and I know another whose whole existence has been a jig on a fiddle; and I know a shrill little fellow who is a fife; and I know a brassy girl who is a pair of cymbals; and once—once," repeated the parson whimsically, "I knew an old maid who was a real living spinet. I even know another old maid now who is nothing but an old music book—long ago sung through, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... stair-foot of Bailie Adams, and confess they scandalised; and if not, to be taken to the mercatt cross of Paisley, with a paper on their breast, bearing these words in great letters: 'We stand here for scandalising,' etc. They all obeyed but Janet Fife, on whom the sentence was executed." Mr. Hector, sheriff-clerk of Renfrewshire, from whose work on the peculiar trials of his county we are quoting, remarks, "If this wholesome treatment was more carried out, we would have ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Swinton, sir Adam Gordon, sir Iohn Leuiston, sir Alexander Ramsie of Dalehousie, [Sidenote: Prisoners taken.] and three and twentie knights, besides ten thousand of the commons: and of prisoners among other were these, Mordacke earle of Fife, son to the gouernour Archembald earle Dowglas, which in the fight lost one of his eies, Thomas erle of Murrey, Robert earle of Angus, and (as some writers haue) the earles of Atholl & Menteith, with fiue hundred other of meaner degres. ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... than anything else that lives. They stroll about individually; they pace as sentinels in all the public places; and they march up and down in squads, companies, and battalions, always with a very great din of drum, fife, and trumpet; ten times the proportion of music that the same number of men would require elsewhere; and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between the high edifices of these lanes, that it could make in broader streets. Nevertheless, I have no quarrel with ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some proper eminence, see shirts waving upon lines, and here and there a plump landlady hurrying about with pots in her hands. When they are sufficiently animated to advance, lead them in exact order, with fife and drum, to that side whence the wind blows, till they come within the scent of roast meat and tobacco. Contrive that they may approach the place fasting about an hour after dinner-time, assure them that there is no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... a customer in Peoria," I heard him say, "who picked up a goat shoe and said 'he supposed dat was apout tree sefenty-fife.' I told him it was $5.25. 'O, tear, tear,' said he, 'can't you make him four tollar? Shake dells me: Fader, ton't you puy ofer four tollar. You should see my Shake; he is only dwendy-dwo, but he got a young head on old shoulters.' ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... the long period of hardship which the missionaries experienced in the conversion of England, a snow-storm drove Cuthbert's boat on the coast of Fife. "The snow closes the road along the shore, mourned his comrades, the storm bars our way over sea." "There is still the pathway of heaven that lies open," said Cuthbert. It is even so with us. Can we regret it? Surely the problem ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... Earl of Pembroke, and Sir John Sieward, son of the Earl of March, landed with an army in Fife, and proceeded to burn and waste. They were met by a Scotch force under Wallace in the forest of Black Ironside, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Margaret Christie, and he went far afield for a wife, namely from Newbiggin in Forfar, where for fourteen years he had his one and only charge, to Strathmiglo in Fife. The marriage was fruitful and a happy one, although there is a hint in the record of some religious difference upon which one would like to dwell if the subject were not too esoteric for this generation. The minister showed a certain ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... was cool, and the dust had been laid by a heavy shower in the night. The horses held up their heads and went swiftly, in spite of their long journey the day before. Soon they heard in the distance the sound of the drum, and the merry note of a fife. Again a pang shot through Betty's heart that she had not been a boy of Peter Junior's age that she might go to war. She heaved a deep sigh and looked up in her grandfather's face. It was a grizzled face, with blue eyes ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Holburn with orders to drive the enemy into the sea; he was himself charged[f] by Lambert with a superior force, and the flight of his men gave to the English possession of the fertile and populous county of Fife. Cromwell hastened to transport his army to the left bank of the river, and advance on the rear of the Scots. They retired: Perth, the seat of government, was besieged; and in a few days[g] the colours of the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... brooded over the snowy forest a deep silence. This fact allowed the listeners without to catch the sound of voices inside the hut, for one of the tramps talked heavily, and the other had a high-pitched voice that carried like a squeaking fife. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... character of the wheat. For this purpose samples of wheat were secured, which were inspected and certified to by M. W. Trexa on April 13th of this year. The inspection cards contained no statement except the grade of the wheat and the weight per bushel, but the samples were all of Fife, for the purpose of a better comparison. The analyses of the wheat were made during October in this laboratory. In each case the wheat was carefully separated from any foreign substances before analysis. The results ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... te pakers voss all ashleep, 'Pap-a, Mr. Richlun sayss you shouldt come into teh offuss.' I kumpt in. Mr. Richlun voss tare, shtayndting yoost so—yoost so—py teh shtofe; undt, Toctor Tseweer, I yoost tell you te ectsectly troot, he toaldt in fife minudts—six minudts—seven minudts, udt may pe—undt shoadt me how effrapotty, high undt low, little undt pick, Tom, Tick, undt Harra, pin ropping me sindts more ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... shriek of fife and drum And horrid clang of brass, The Fire Brigades of England come And down St. Giles's pass. Oh grand, methinks, in such array To spend a Whitsun Holiday All soaking to the skin! (Yet shoes and hose ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... apparel with them—seeing that the Grand Khan would have a court and our Sovereigns must be rightly represented—and this morning they suited themselves only less splendidly than did the Admiral. The great banner of Castile and Leon was ready for carrying. Trumpet, drum and fife should land. Fray Ignatio was ready—oh, ready! His liquid dark eyes had an unearthly look. Gifts were being sorted out. There were aboard rich things, valued in any land of ours, for gifts to the Grand Khan and his ministers, or the Emperor of Cipango and his. For Queens and Empresses ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... old green, flecked with the waving tree shadows, and bright with the buttercups nodding here and there, seemed to see those men and boys drilling there in the far-off summer twilights; to hear the sharp words of command; the sound of fife and drum. And the familiar names mentioned more than once, well-known village names, names belonging to their own families in some instances, ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... command-in-chief, an officer of a rude force of character, amounting often to brutality, and careless as to those details of military duty which savor more of the accountant's inkstand than of the drum and fife, but ambitious, active, and well acquainted with the character of the service for which he was detailed. He was, at the time, in command in Kansas, subject in a measure to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes deceived him. That is also what Mr. Rhodes did with the Reformers. He got them into trouble, and then stayed out himself. A judicious man. He has always been that. As to this there was a moment of doubt, once. It was when he was out on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... two young ladies are occasionally found gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening air from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the lodge on the inspiring topic of the "British Grenadiers"; and as the evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while two men pace together up and down, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the street. You saw the soldiers hasten to take their places in the gathering ranks. You marched beside them and kept step with the music. The sunlight gleamed from their bayonets. Their standards waved in the breeze, while the drum, the fife, the bugle, and the trumpet thrilled you as never before. You marched proudly and defiantly. You felt that you could annihilate the stoutest Rebel. You followed the soldiers to the railroad depot and hurrahed till the train which bore them away was ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Fife are expected here every day from Spa; but we hear nothing certain yet of their graces of Richmond, for whom I am a little impatient; and for pam too, who I hope comes with them. In French houses it is impossible to meet with any thing but whist, which I am determined never to learn again. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... with a year's leave, and have come to England until my next billet is fixed. We named the boy "Paul" after myself, and have given him the surname which was with difficulty made out on the brass collar of a dog which came with him—the name of "Fife," presumably that of its former master. I seemed to gather from the man that the dog had been found with the child, but cannot be sure. It is a breed I do not know. Inquiries and advertisements were of no avail—no white child seemed to be inquired for, and we had ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Master Hal; they say that all the young gentlemen who have archery uniforms are to walk together in a body, I think they say, Sir; and they are to parade along the Well-Walk, they desired me to say, Sir, with a drum and fife, and so up the hill, by Prince's Place, and all to go upon the Downs together, to the place of meeting. I am not sure I'm right, Sir, for both the young gentlemen spoke at once, and the wind is very high at the street door, so that I could not well make out all they said; but I believe ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... his fish-book. If the price of the fish were fixed, there could be no difficulty in ascertaining the money share of each man in a particular haul, or in the catch of a week or a fortnight, as is done in Fife and in some of the Wick fisheries; and the factor might either pay it in cash or give an order, which the fisherman or one of his family could cash at the merchant's counting-house. If the price were left to be fixed at the end of the season, the law might ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... 3 islands areas*; Borders, Central, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Grampian, Highland, Lothian, Orkney*, ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 1504, the barony or manour of Auchinleck, (pronounced Affleck[1237],) in Ayrshire, which belonged to a family of the same name with the lands, having fallen to the Crown by forfeiture, James the Fourth, King of Scotland, granted it to Thomas Boswell, a branch of an ancient family in the county of Fife, stiling him in the charter, dilecto familiari nostro; and assigning, as the cause of the grant, pro bono et fideli servitio nobis praestito. Thomas Boswell was slain in battle, fighting along with his Sovereign, at the fatal field of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... devotion excessive: But the King, who's been bored by that song From his cradle - each day - all day long - Who's heard it loud-shouted By throats operatic, And loyally spouted By courtiers emphatic - By soldier - by sailor - by drum and by fife - Small blame if he thinks it the plague of his life! While his subjects sing loudly and long, Their King - who would willingly ban them - Sits, worry disguising, anathematising That Bogie, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... their mirth, All that would wake the soul to earth. Choose ye the softly-breathing-flute, The mellow horn, the loving lute; The viol you must not forget, And take the sprightly flageolet And grave bassoon; choose too the fife, Whose warblings in the tuneful strife, Mingling in mystery with the words, May seem like ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... but not in talk. My third is in barn, but not in house. My fourth is in pheasant, and also in grouse. My fifth is in April, but not in May. My sixth is in night, but not in day. My seventh is in bud, but not in flower. My eighth is in rain, and also in shower. My ninth is in flute, but not in fife. My tenth is in cousin, but not in wife. My eleventh is in circle, but not in ring. My whole was the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the weather earring! Cheery, my boys! Let go the sheet, now! Stand by at the braces, you! With a will, aloft there! Belay, starboard watch! Fifer! Come aft, fifer, and give 'em a tune! Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand—smallest boy ever seen—big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on a paving- stone—gives 'em a tune with all his might and main. Hoo-roar, fifer! With a will, my lads! Tip 'em a livelier one, fifer! ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... 'thrill', 'trill' and 'drill';—or in the consonants in the middle of the word, as between 'cancer' and 'canker'; 'nipple' and 'nibble'; 'tittle' and 'title'; 'price' and 'prize'; 'consort' and 'concert';—or there is a change in both, as between 'pipe' and 'fife'. ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, 5 Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcaeus,[21] fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... out to see, and declared it was the loveliest sight they ever beheld, while Thorny played "Hail Columbia" on his fife, and Ben, mounting the gate-post, crowed long and loud like a happy cockerel who had just reached his majority. He had been surprised and delighted with the gifts he found in his room on awaking and guessed why Miss Celia and Thorny gave him such pretty ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... fight our country's foe, Who would follow our Old Glory, Where her stars and stripes might go; To the battle cry of Freedom, All our men would surely come, And fight for world-wide Victory At the call of fife and drum. We have proved to all creation That our boys are real true blue, And we've shown those fiendish Prussians, What ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... by his side, And on a bull-frog he did ride. "March on!" he cried. And, hot and thick, His army rushed, in double quick. And hardly one short hour had waned, Before the ranks the rat-camp gained, With sounding drum and screaming fife, Enough to raise the dead to life. The rats, awakened by the clatter, Rushed out to see what was the matter, Then down the whole mouse-army flew, And many thieving rats it slew. The mice hurrahed, the rats they squealed, And soon the dreadful battle-field Was blue with smoke ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... signal; and, in a few minutes, Domilaw, Dumprender, and Arthur's Seat, exhibited tops of fire as the night fell down on them, bearing the tidings, as if lightnings flying on different courses revealed them, through Berwickshire and the Lothians, and enabling Roxburghshire and Fife to read the tale; while Binning's Craig, repeating the telegraphic fire, startled the burghers of Linlithgow on the one hand, and on the other aroused the men ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... great, and they are in the two poems which were most deserving of improvement, as being the most impressive and the most original. Each is excellent in its way, but 'Kilmeny' is of the highest character; 'The Witch of Fife' is a real work of fancy—'Kilmeny' a fine one of imagination, which is a higher and rarer gift. These poems have given general pleasure throughout the house; my eldest girl often comes out with a stanza or two of 'The Witch,' but she wishes ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... heiress of the day. It is true that the hereditary possession of Skye, Staffa, Mull, Arran, and Bute went, with the title, to the Marquis of Auldreekie, together with the counties of Caithness and Ross-shire. But the property in Fife, Aberdeen, Perth, and Kincardineshire, comprising the greater part of those counties, and the coal-mines in Lanark, as well as the enormous estate within the city of Glasgow, were unentailed, and went to the Lady Glencora. She was a fair girl, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... splendid, Where gold with each hue of the Rainbow was blended: In silver and black, like a fair pensive Maid, Who mourns for her love, was the other array'd. The CHOUGH came from Cornwall, and brought up his Wife; The GROUSE travell'd south, from his Lairdship in Fife; The BUNTING forsook her soft nest in the reeds, [p 7] And the WIDOW-BIRD came, though she still wore her weeds. Sir John HERON, of the Lakes, strutted in a grand pas, But no card had been sent to the pilfering DAW, As the Peacock kept up his ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... cannot exceed 100 feet. In the Frith of Forth there are, in certain places, particularly about Newhaven, the most perfect evidence of a sea bank, where the washing of the sea had worn the land, upon a higher level than the present. The same appearance is to be found at Ely upon the Fife coast, where the sea had washed out grottos in the rocks; and above Kinneel, there is a bed of oyster shells some feet deep appearing in the side of the bank, about 20 or 30 feet above the level of the sea, which corresponds with the old sea banks. I have seen the same evidence in the Frith of Cromarty, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... William had bought the good-will of another chemist's business. But before settling down in their new home, the Howitts undertook a long pedestrian tour through Scotland and the north of England, in the course of which they explored the Rob Roy country, rambled through Fife, made acquaintance with the beauties of Edinburgh, looked in upon Robert Owen's model factories at New Lanark, got a glimpse of Walter Scott at Melrose, were mistaken for a runaway couple at Gretna Green, gazed reverently on Rydal ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... you if you try honestly to be true to Him," said the boatswain, as he wrung his son's hand, and stepped down the side of the fine frigate to which Pearce through the interest of his late captain had been appointed. The crew went tramping round the capstan to the sound of the merry fife, the anchor was away, and under a wide spread of snowy canvas the dashing "Blanche" of thirty-two guns, commanded by the gallant Captain Faulkner, stood through the Needle passage between the Isle of Wight and the main, on her way down channel, bound out to the West ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the town. Of this party was the yeomanry-band of which Tom Durfy spoke, though, to say the truth, considering Tom's apprehensions on the subject, it was of slender force. One trumpet, one clarionet, a fife, a big drum, and a pair of cymbals, with a "real nigger" to play them, were all they ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... tree, where the alligator couldn't find him, and the frog boy beat on a hollow log with a stick as if it were a drum. Then he blew out his cheeks, whistling, and made a noise like a fife. Then he aimed his wooden gun and cried: "Bang! Bang! Bung! Bung!" just as if the wooden gun had powder in it. Next Bawly waved his cap with the feather in it, and the alligator heard all this, and he saw the waving soldier cap, and he, surely enough, thought a whole big ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... chief. We are not ashamed to confess that the tear has been wrung from our eye by the plaintive notes of the few rude instruments that alone lament over the poor private's simple bier—the inharmonious fife, and the measured beats of the muffled drum; while the dull tramp of the appointed mourners following a comrade to his obscure resting-place falls chilly on the heart. Though even he, lowly in death as in life, shares with his leader in the brief wild honours of a soldier's grave—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... we had an infernal clamour of drums in the principal street, which happened to be our own. There might have been fifty, unaccompanied by any wind instrument. The French do not use the fife, and when one is treated to the drum, it is generally in large potions, and nothing but drum. This is a relic of barbarism, and is quite unworthy of a musical age. There is more or less of it in all the garrisoned towns of Europe. You may imagine the satisfaction with ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with a single compass, usually placed before the other. In line-of-battle ships it is generally placed on the fife-rail in the centre and foremost ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... traveler from upstream is questioned and on the day the big rise is due the great feast day is proclaimed and the people, generally five thousand or more, march toward the coming tide to meet the water. If there is an abundance of water they are sure of a great harvest. With fife and drum they meet the oncoming flood and go back with it; if it is a great flood they are happy and merry, but if the tide is low they are sad and gloomy for they know that ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... swept through the land— I somehow thought, because I loved you so, That you would stay. I did not understand That something stronger than my love could come, To draw you, half-reluctant, from my heart; I never thought the call of fife and drum Would rend our cloak of ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... depressing warfare should have so delightedly seized and adopted this unusual and comparatively joyous style of singing, but perhaps the new spirit of liberty demanded more animated and spirited expression; and Billings' psalm-tunes were played with drum and fife on the battlefield to inspire the American soldiers. Billings wrote of his fuguing invention, "It has more than twenty times the power of the old slow tunes. Now the solemn bass demands their attention, next the manly tenor, now the lofty counter, now the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... that,' said the soldier. 'I ken nae mair; I was sent on anither little errand of the Earl of Fife into the Highlands, and only cam back hither a week ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and interjected, "Ay, ay, and you'll make all the fraca that need be about the lads, and cock your hat to the fife, and march and act the veteran as if you were Moore himself, but you'll be far away from knowing what of their pomp and youth is stirring the hearts of your brother Dugald and me. The Army is all bye for us, Jock, Boney's by the heels; there's younger men upon the roster ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Princess Louise-Margaret of Prussia, the daughter of Prince Frederick-Charles of Prussia and Princess Marie-Anne of Anhalt. He has three children; Margaret, the oldest, is the Crown Princess of Sweden; Prince Arthur is married to his cousin, Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife, and Princess ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... squeak of the fife, and this batter of drum Lo! the Swiss of the Church from Perugia come; The militant angels, whose sabres drive home To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed and abhorred, The good Father's missives, and "Thus saith the Lord!" And lend to his logic ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... your pusiness, young Armstrong,' he said to Paul when the rush was over. 'I gan deach anypoty his pusiness if he is not a vool. I am Cheorge Dargo. You haf done your work gabidally, and you are vorth fife dimes vot I am baying you. But I alvays like the shady site of a pargain, and I shall only ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... O Faunes, and O ye pleasaunt Springs 145 Of Tempe, where the countrey nymphs are rife, Through whose not costly care each shepheard sings As merrie notes upon his rusticke fife As that Ascraean bard*, whose fame now rings Through the wide world, and leads as ioyfull life; 150 Free from all troubles and from worldly toyle, In which fond men doe all their dayes ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... sandy level of the parade. The company cooks were already at their ranges, and a musician of the guard had been sent to rouse his fellows in the barracks, for the old-style reveille still held good at many a post in Arizona, before the drum and fife were almost entirely abandoned in favor of the harsher bugle, by the infantry of our scattered little army. Plume loved tradition. At West Point, where he had often visited in younger days, and at all the "old-time" garrisons, the bang of the morning ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew—Piggy Lew—and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... about that Jack is set to watch the cattle, and she allows him only rotten food. An old man with whom he shares his victuals grants him three wishes in return for his kindness. He asks for a bow and a fife; and the old man gives him a bow that never misses its aim, and a fife that compels every one to dance. He also grants Jack's third wish, that every time his step-mother hurls a bad word at him or about him, she shall give forth another noise ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... drilling of soldiers, there was now nothing but warlike bustle in the streets of Boston. The drum and fife, the rattle of arms, and the shouts of boys, were heard from morning till night. In about a month, the fleet set sail, carrying four regiments from New England and New York, besides the English soldiers. The whole army amounted to at least seven thousand men. They steered for ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... secret for a time," said the mediciner. "I have possessed two or three tattling fools, in deep confidence, that the hand which was found was that of your knighthood's groom, Black Quentin, and your knighthood knows that he has parted for Fife, in such sort as to make it ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... came marching a regiment of men, without fife or drum, moving to the music of a refrain which lifted and fell on the quiet air. It was the Battle Hymn of the Republic,—and the two listeners ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... occasion, and they did all that lay within the compass of their power to keep me out, insomuch, that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery; and it was a thing that made my heart grieve when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at me; but I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness. Poor old Mr Kilfuddy ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... their rumbling hollow, The answering trumpets blow: War-horn and fife and cymbals follow, From ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... the block-house gates unbar, the column's solemn tread, I saw the Tree of a single leaf its splendid foliage shed To wave awhile that August morn above the column's head; I heard the moan of muffled drum, the woman's wail of fife, The Dead March played for Dearborn's men just marching out of life; The swooping of the savage cloud that burst upon the rank And struck it with its thunderbolt in forehead and in flank, The spatter of the musket-shot, the rifles' whistling rain,— The sandhills drift round hope forlorn that ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... passed; my professional studies were finished, and I had occasion to visit a Fife laird near the East Neuk. The gentleman was notable for his taste in kitchen-gardening; and having a particularly fine bed of Jerusalem artichokes which I must see, he conducted me to the scene of his triumphs, when, hard at work with the rake and hoe, whom should I find as the much ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... spend a week in Fife, An unco week it proved to be, For there I met a waesome wife, Lamenting her viduity. Her grief brak' out sae fierce and fell, I thought her heart wad burst the shell; And, I was sae left to mysel, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke, Cragg'd, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort Beflagg'd. About, on seaward drooping hills, New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles, And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns, There, on the sunny frontage of a hill, Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead, My dead, the ready and the strong of word. Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; The sea bombards their founded towers; the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... "won't the missus look fine in these!" One of the reservists asked me: "Do you think I shall lose my thigh? You see, I want to do the best I can for my family, and if I do lose my leg I shall be useless, as I work in the pits in Fife." Another Scotchman, a shoemaker, was full of anxiety about the future support of his wife and children. "If only my wound," he said dejectedly, "had been below my knee instead of above it! Because this"—pointing to the wounded ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... and saw white flags fluttering before a drum and fife band and a knot of youths in sweaters gathered round the dummy breech of a four-inch gun which they were feeding at ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... still under the shadow of my father's death I might have welcomed the chance of new lands and new folk. As it was, I felt the loneliness of an exile. That afternoon I walked on the Braid Hills, and when I saw in the clear spring sunlight the coast of Fife, and remembered Kirkcaple and my boyish days, I could have found it in me to sit down ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... unfortunate. By way, perhaps, of revenge, Hughes Ball this year ran off with and married Mademoiselle Mercandotti, premiere danseuse at His Majesty's Theatre, a beautiful girl of sixteen, reported in the scandal of the day to be a natural daughter of the Earl of Fife. The incident of Lady Jane Paget we have mentioned is thus referred to by Charles Molloy Westmacott, the Ishmael of the press of his day, in the English Spy, a work which, as we shall presently see, was also illustrated by ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... fife, denotes that there will be an unexpected call on you to defend your honor, or that of some person near ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the company paraded through the streets of the city, to the inspiriting music of a fife and drum, and were dismissed at 10 P. M., to meet again on the receipt of orders from Providence, to be announced by the discharge of three guns on the Mall, and by the ringing of the ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... that we do not feel horror so much as an unbearable pity for Macbeth's mind. The horror is felt later, when it is made plain that the treachery does not end with that old man on the bed, but proceeds in a spreading growth of murder till the man who fought so knightly at Fife is the haunted awful figure who goes ghastly, killing men, women and little children, till Scotland is like a grave. At the end, the "worthy gentleman," "noble Macbeth," having fallen from depth to depth of degradation, is old, hag-haunted, sick ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... advertisements in the colonial newspapers furnish unconscious evidence of the intellectual progress of the Negroes during the eighteenth century. "He's an 'artful,'"[1] "plausible,"[2] "smart,"[3] or "sensible fellow,"[4] "delights much in traffic,"[5] and "plays on the fife extremely well,"[6] are some of the statements found in the descriptions of fugitive slaves. Other fugitives were speaking "plainly,"[7] "talking indifferent English,"[8] "remarkably good English,"[9] and "exceedingly good English."[10] In some advertisements we observe such expressions ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... melodramatic itself; it is, however, saved from such accusation by the truthfulness of the handling; and the homeliness of a portion of it recalls the ballad of "Up at the villa, down in the city," with its speeches of drum and fife. Nevertheless, here are combined the true elements of modern sensational writing: there are the broad canvas, the vivid colors, the abrupt contrast, all the dramatic and startling effects that weekly fiction affords, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Poland. Segismund his Son. Astolfo his Nephew. Estrella his Niece. Clotaldo a General in Basilio's Service. Rosaura a Muscovite Lady. Fife her Attendant. ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... instruments; and that the better class of men—who usually make the best musicians—always preferred the musket to the bugle. Nor was there either incentive to good music, or appreciation for it, among the masses of the fighters. The drum and fife were the best they had known "at musters;" and they were good enough still, to fight by. So, recalling the prowess achieved constantly, in following them, it may be wondered what possible results might have come from ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... employed were flattering: they were not gaolers and turnkeys, but captains of divisions and delegates. He delivered lectures upon geography and astronomy: those who could play instruments, such as clarionet, fife, and violin, were stationed on the deck, while the rest marched in ranks. He instituted a court of enquiry, consisting of five persons, of which his clerk was the recorder, who examined witnesses, and disposed of trivial offences, by exhortation, warning, and reproof; and in more flagrant ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Wheeling [Footnote: Fort Henry. For an account of the siege, see De Haas, pp. 223-340. It took place in the early days of September.] was attacked by two or three hundred Indians; with them came a party of Detroit Rangers, marshalled by drum and fife, and carrying the British colors. [Footnote The accounts of the different sieges of Wheeling were first written down from the statements of the pioneers when they had grown very aged. In consequence, there is much uncertainty as to the various incidents. Thus there seems ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... you," said they. I haf peen captain of the furnace-men twenty years, and I say to the Union—[excitedly]—"Can you tell me then, as well as I can tell you, what iss the right wages for the work that these men do?" For fife and twenty years I haf paid my moneys to the Union and—[with great excitement]—for nothings! What iss that but roguery, for all that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he excitedly, "I hafe knowed dot boy ven I sold cloding in Des Moines, more as fife years ago, and so help me Moses I did nefer belief he vud do such a ting ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... refuses and then assents. Battle of Dunbar. Progress of Cromwell. The king escapes and is afterwards taken. The godliness of Cromwell. Dissensions among the Scots. Coronation of Charles. Cromwell lands in Fife. Charles marches into England. Defeat of the earl of Derby. Battle of Worcester. Defeat of the royalists. The king escapes. Loss of the royalists. Adventures of the king at Whiteladies. At Madeley. In the royal oak. At ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... is heard, like the note of a whistle, fife, or flute. This is due to a dry constriction of the bronchial tubes and it is heard in chronic bronchitis ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Selkirk, Mariner, a native of Largo, in the County of Fife, Scotland, who lived on this island in complete solitude for four years and four months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley, 96 tons, 16 guns, A.D. 1704, and was taken off in the Duke privateer, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... There must have been twenty of them, both brass and fife, and they all played the Washington Post, but no two had the luck to fall on the same bar at the same moment. It was a medley of all the tunes in music, an absolute kaleidoscope of sounds, and meantime there was the clash ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... changing color like the rainbow. Some trees appeared from a distance to be covered with many-colored flowers. Nell was particularly charmed by the sight of paradisaical fly-catchers and rather large, black birds, with a crimson lining to the wings, which emitted sounds like a pastoral fife. Charming woodpeckers, rosy on top and bright blue beneath, sped in the sun's luster, catching in their flight bees and grasshoppers. On the treetops resounded the screams of the green parrot, and at times there reached them sounds as ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... which this ministerial reserve was carried was shown by a question put to Mr. Asquith in his own constituency in East Fife on the 6th of December. Scottish "hecklers" are intelligent and well informed on current politics, and no one who knows them can imagine one of them asking the Prime Minister whether he intended to introduce a Home Rule Bill if Home Rule ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... shed, had wiped away all stains upon his memory, and enshrined him in the hearts of Snowdon's people as a martyr. He was the first dead soldier returned to them, his the first soldier's grave in their churchyard; and so a goodly throng were there, with plaintive fife and muffled drum, to do him honor. His major was coming with him, it was said—Major Stanley, who had himself been found, in a half-fainting condition watching by the dead—Major Stanley, who had seen that the body was embalmed, had written ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... one blue blanket, six German silver spoons, sixteen pairs of various car-rings, twelve finger-rings, two dozen mule harness bells, six elastic heavy brass spring wires, one pound long white horsehair, three combs, one papier-mache tray, one boxwood fife, one kaleidoscope. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... for vifteen years I vorked at making brooms—me und my vife—from fife in the morning until six at night, und I loose mine fingern trying to save enough money to puy a house that we could call our own. Then when we saved eight hundred dollars this man come to us und sold ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... shortness of summer nights. As the fiery carriage-horses would not brook the sight of the encampment, she discarded them for a time, and when compelled to leave home rode Erebus at no slight risk of her life—for he evinced the greatest repugnance to the sound of drum or fife. ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... weather. The gentlemen have all turned boys. They play boyish games on the poop and quarter-deck. For instance: They lay a knife on the fife-rail of the mainmast—stand off three steps, shut one eye, walk up and strike at it with the fore-finger; (seldom hit it;) also they lay a knife on the deck and walk seven or eight steps with eyes close shut, and try ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thereserls, and compliments to all my friends in the house and out of the house. I wish I were likely soon to hear the Berchtesgadner symphonies, and perhaps blow a trumpet or play a fife in one myself. I saw and heard the great festival of St. Petronius in Bologna. It was fine, but long. The trumpeters came from Lucca to make the proper flourish of honor, but ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... me like small links connecting me with another world, which I had once been in, and which, please God, I might yet see again. I went on board the first night, after supper; found the old cook in the galley, playing upon the fife which I had given him, as a parting present; had a hearty shake of the hand from him; and dove down into the forecastle, where were my old ship-mates, the same as ever, glad to see me; for they had nearly given us up as lost, especially when they did not find us in Santa Barbara. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... that we do not head our procession with a fife and drum," laughed Frank. "We're not supposed ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Hollis," said she turning another corner, and running the wrong way with all her might. Past candy-stalls, past toy-shops, past orange-wagons. Hark, music again! Not the soft strains of a harp, but the stirring notes of bugle, fife, and drum. Fly kept time with ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... Kirkcaldy, in the county of Fife, Scotland, on the 5th of June 1723. He was the son of Adam Smith, Writer to the Signet, Judge Advocate for Scotland and Comptroller of the Customs in the Kirkcaldy district, by Margaret, daughter of John Douglas ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... drawn up on three sides of a square, with ranks opened facing each other, and in the centre of the fourth and open side a grave was dug and a coffin was placed beside it. The condemned soldier was marched between the ranks of the command, preceded by a drum and fife band, playing the "dead-march," and then was taken to the coffin, where he was blindfolded and required to stand in front of six men armed with rifles, five only of which were loaded with ball. At the command "Fire!" from a designated officer, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer |
