"Murrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... converse with Penny otherwise than in an incidental meeting at Mr. Luff's. It was not so easy to get invited to Long Meadows, the residence of the Palfreys; for though Mr. Palfrey had been losing money of late years, not being able quite to recover his feet after the terrible murrain which forced him to borrow, his family were far from considering themselves on the same level even as the old-established tradespeople with whom they visited. The greatest people, even kings and queens, must visit with somebody, and the equals ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... "A murrain on those folk. There has been bungling among the pack-riders. That new man Derek is an ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... gathereth mist and clouds, and letteth the work of labouring men, and tarrieth and letteth ripening of corn and of fruits, and exciteth rheum and running flux, and increaseth and strengtheneth all moist ills, and is cause of hunger and of famine, and of corruption and murrain of beasts and sheep; for corrupt showers do corrupt the grass and herbs of pasture, whereof ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the sacrifice of the ox was common. I have myself often listened to the account given by one near and dear to me, who was in early life personally engaged in the offering up and burying of a poor live cow as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Murrain. This occurred within twenty miles of the metropolis of Scotland. In the same district a relative of mine bought a farm not very many years ago. Among his first acts, after taking possession, was the inclosing a small triangular corner of one of the fields within a stone ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... drive his plough a few yards beyond the proper line of his boundary, and thus add half an acre of Barkhara to his own little tenement, which was situated in Bedu. That very night his only son was bitten by a snake, and his two bullocks were seized with the murrain. In terror he went of to the village temple, confessed his sin, and vowed, not only to restore the half-acre of land to the village of Barkhara, but to build a very handsome shrine upon the spot as a perpetual sign of his repentance. The boy and the bullocks all three ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... You ought to thank your stars that no worse has happened yet; that the enchanter, in fleeing, has not wrung your neck as he went out, or cast a spell on you, which will fire your barns, lame your geese, give your fowls the pip, your horses the glanders, your cattle the murrain, your children the St. Vitus' dance, your wife the creeping palsy, and yourself the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... shape and his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the corn-bins, and the curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part of an old curse picked up from a fakir by the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... very soon destroyed. My fears have been great, from the greatness of our stake; but I now write in the greatest confidence of our getting over this ugly business. We have another very disagreeable affair, that may have fatal consequences: there rages a murrain among the cows; we dare not eat milk, butter, beef, nor any thing from that species. Unless there is snow or frost soon, it is likely to @spread dreadfully though hitherto it has not reached many miles from London. At first, it was imagined that the Papists ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... cow 'em, nut to speak on; Fin'ly they swore thet they'd go out an' stay, An' hev their fill o' mutton every day; 300 Then dogs an' shepherds, after much hard dammin', [Groan from Deac'n G.] Turned tu an' give 'em a tormented lammin', An' sez, 'Ye sha'n't go out, the murrain rot ye, To keep us wastin' half our time to watch ye!' But then the question come, How live together 'thout losin' sleep, nor nary yew nor wether? Now there wuz some dogs (noways wuth their keep) Thet sheered their cousins' tastes an' sheered the sheep; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... uninterrupted study; two such would finish the work with a murrain. I have several engagements next week; I wonder how I was such a fool as to take them. I think I shall be done, however, before Saturday. What shall I have to think of when I lie down at night and awake in the morning? What will be my plague and my pastime, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of the plant have, generally speaking, first been affected, and then the root." From this mode of manifesting itself, the potato disease was commonly called in Ireland, as in Scotland, the Potato Blight. It had other names given to it; potato murrain, cholera in the potato, and so on; but Potato Blight in Ireland, at least, was and is its all but universal name. The whole stem soon became affected after the blight had appeared on the leaves, more especially if the weather was damp; and for some time before the period ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... at me, foam upon his lips. Men were between us now,—the Governor, Francis West, Master Pory, Hamor, Wynne,—and a babel of excited voices arose. The diversion I had aimed to make had been made with a vengeance. West had me by the arm. "What a murrain is all this coil about, Ralph Percy? If you hurt hair of his head, you ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... plague was soon accompanied by a fatal murrain among the cattle. Of what nature this murrain may have been can no more be determined than whether it originated from communication with the plague patients or from other causes. There was everywhere a great rise in the price of food. For a whole year, until it terminated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... eye, but their speed and endurance are wonderful. There is no such thing as a cock-tail in the country, and the waggon teams of wiry little thoroughbreds, half Arab, look very strange to our eyes, going full tilt. There is a terrible murrain, called the lung-sickness, among horses and oxen here, every four or five years, but it never touches those that are stabled, however exposed to wet or wind on ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... upon this business!" said the elder son, "for I perceive no end to it. Here I have the red, and here the blue and the green; and to me they seem all excellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest, and whom I have called my father, and if it were not for the fair maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge, I would even tumble them all into the salt sea, and go home ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... wilderness, and many such; nothing so common as miracles, visions, revelations, prophecies. Now what these brain-sick heretics once broach, and impostors set on foot, be it never so absurd, false, and prodigious, the common people will follow and believe. It will run along like murrain in cattle, scab in sheep. Nulla scabies, as [6574]he said, superstitione scabiosior; as he that is bitten with a mad dog bites others, and all in the end become mad; either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind zeal, hope and fear, the giddy-headed multitude will embrace it, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... murrain to you? No honest buyer, I'll warrant, but a hanger-on of the dicers—or something worse. Go! dance off, and find fitter company, or I'll give you a tune to a little ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... O Morthwyrtha! Thou deemest thyself wiser than we are; we wretched hags, whom the ceorl seeks when his herd has the murrain, or the girl when her false love forsakes her; we, who have no dwelling known to man; but are found at need in the wold or the cave, or the side of dull slimy streams where the murderess-mother hath drowned her babe. Askest ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foolish nation, not able to get into its head that free trade does indeed mean the removal of taxation from its imports, but not of supervision from them, demands unlimited foreign beef, and is supplied with the cattle murrain and the like. There may be all manner of demands, all manner of supplies. The true political economist regulates these; the false political economist leaves them to be regulated by (not Divine) Providence. For, indeed, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... message. Whereto Belcolore would fain have demurred; but Bentivegna gave her a threatening glance, saying:—"So, then, thou takest a pledge from Master Priest? By Christ, I vow, I have half a mind to give thee a great clout o' the chin. Go, give it back at once, a murrain on thee! And look to it that whatever he may have a mind to, were it our very ass, he be never denied." So, with a very bad grace, Belcolore got up, and went to the wardrobe, and took out the cloak, and gave it to the clerk, saying:—"Tell thy master from me:—Would to God ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "A murrain on me," he said, "but I have made my lady angry in good earnest! and that is an unwonted sight for to see.—I crave your pardon, my lady! It was not poor Dick Whitaker disputed your honourable commands, but only that second draught of double ale. We have put a double stroke of malt to it, as your ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Arcadia, asked us many questions in a slow deliberate voice. We told him who we were, and tried to interest him in the cattle-plague, which he appeared to regard as an evil very unreal and far away—like the murrain upon Pharaoh's herds which one reads about in Exodus. But he was courteous and polite, doing the honours of his pasture with simplicity and ease. He took us to his chalet and gave us bowls of pure cold milk. It was a funny little wooden house, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... last week the distemper has raged fearfully—fearfully, indeed," said Rainbird; "but yesterday and to-day have far exceeded all that have gone before. The distempered have died quicker than cattle of the murrain. I visited upwards of a hundred houses in the Borough this morning, and only found ten persons alive; and out of those ten, not one, I will venture to say, is alive now. It will, in truth, be a mercy if they are gone. There were distracted mothers raving ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mysterious and capricious powers, who exact vengeance for the transgression of arbitrary laws which they have not revealed, and who must be propitiated by public sacrifice, lest some collective punishment fall on the tribe, blighting its crops and smiting its herds with murrain, or giving it over into the hand of its enemies. This religion makes very little attempt to correct the current standard of values. Its rewards are wealth and prosperity; its punishments are calamity in this world and perhaps torture in the next. It is not, however, incapable ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... "A murrain on your youth," cried Adrian, testily. "However, since there 's no quieting you otherwise, I suppose, for the sake of peace, I 'd best tell you, and have done with it. Well, then,"—he stood off, to watch the effect of his announcement,—"Craford's ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... with a murrain to thee," muttered Heriot to himself; and suddenly changing his tone, he said aloud,—"I pray you, neighbour David, when are you and I to have a settlement for the bullion wherewith I supplied you to mount yonder hall-clock at ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... flowers, Nay, bid them grasp the ground like towering oaks And shadow all the zenith;" and yet again The madness of distrustful friendship gleamed From his fierce eyes, "Oh villain, damned villain, God's murrain on his heart! I know full well He hides what he can hide! He wears no fault Upon the gloss and frippery of his breast! It is not that! It is the hidden things, Unseizable, the things I do not know, Ay, it is these, these, these and these alone That I mistrust." ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... reality, while the sum of the conditions of one year tally closely with those of another, the daily changes and variations create a variety which must be constantly watched and provided for. A sudden freshet and unseasonable access of heat or cold, a scourge of hail, a drought, a murrain among the cattle, call for ingenuity and for resourcefulness; and for courage, a higher moral quality. Constant comradeship with Nature seems to beget placidity and quiet assurance. From using the great natural forces which bring to pass crops and the seasons, they ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... coast—the Gascons' Graveyard—to hover a little if their ships chanced to pass that way—they had only one tall ship and a pinnace—only to watch and bring me word of Philip's doings. One must watch Philip always. What a murrain right had he to make any plantation there, a hundred leagues north of his Spanish Main, and only six weeks from England? By my dread father's soul, I tell you he had none—none!' She stamped her red foot again, and the two children shrunk ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Sir Thomas prove'd in battle, Performing prodigies, with spear and shield; His valour, like a murrain among cattle, Was reckon'd very fatal in the field. Yet, tho' Sir Thomas had an iron fist, He was, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... Out, men, and help us. The man that catches him shall be rewarded well. We must find him; he is hereabouts, for I heard his voice. A murrain on the fellow—all this trouble for a ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... "Now a murrain on thee, Shrope, for mentioning that name," cried Elizabeth her humor changing instantly. "We, too, have somewhat to say of Francis Stafford, but the time is not yet ripe. When it is, then will I hear what thou hast to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... married, and lived in sweet content, about three quarters of a year—when trouble came; but in a vulgar form. A murrain carried off several of Harry Vint's cattle; and it then came out that he had purchased six of them on credit, and had been induced to set his hand to bills of exchange for them. His rent was also behind, and, in fact, his affairs were in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... not the rogue at Oxford, with a murrain on him, instead of lurching about here carrying ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... deaths by shot or sword-stroke make up the chief sum of mortality. As usual the murrain-like pestilence which swept off its daily victims both within an without the town, was more effective than any direct agency of man. By the month of December the number of the garrison had been reduced to less than three thousand, while it is probable that the archduke had not eight thousand ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... redistribution, could only be kept from deteriorating in value by incessant labour, in which a score of different classes of clerks and workmen in the service of the treasury all took part, according to their trades. If the tax were received in oxen, it was led to pasturage, or at times, when a murrain threatened to destroy it, to the slaughter-house and the currier; if it were in corn, it was bolted, ground to flour, and made into bread and pastry; if it were in stuffs, it was washed, ironed, and folded, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the chief is checked by that of the priest. A supposed skill in medicine, imaginary arts of divination, and an accredited power over the elements are the prerogatives of certain witches and wizards. Thus, when a murrain among the cattle, or the death of an important individual has taken place, the blame is laid upon some unfortunate victim whom the witch or wizard points out. And the ordeal to which he must submit, is equal in cruelty to those of the Gold Coast. He is beaten with sticks, and then pegged down to ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... "A murrain on the bugs," he said. "We shall have a creepy night of it. Let us bottle this treasure and lay the mattress out of their reach on the sarcophagus. Endure them a while, Deborah, till ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... in the same neighbourhood. Misfortune still pursued him; he rented one of the farms at a sum exceeding its value, and his capital was much too limited for stocking the other, while a disastrous murrain decimated his flock. Within the space of three years he was again a penniless adventurer. Removing from the farm-homestead of Corfardin, he accepted the generous invitation of his hospitable neighbour, Mr James Macturk of Stenhouse, to reside in his house till some suitable ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... night, the slow mists of the evening dropped, Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, and rose Above the roofs, and by the Unlighted Shrine Lay as the slimy water of the troughs When murrain thins the cattle of Er-Heb: And through the mist men heard the Red ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... returned she, "we have parted with the colt, and have only got a gross of green spectacles, with copper rims and shagreen cases! A murrain take such trumpery! The blockhead has been imposed upon, and should have known his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... this unknown land. It will surprise no one to learn that pretty soon these people, poisoned by malaria, stung by venomous insects and reptiles, and having scarcely anything to eat, were dying like cattle with the murrain. In the end a ship was sent to bring back ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... farther inland it was a wretched business, nothing but paying lock-dues, bumping against schuyts, and towing down stinking canals. Never a peaceful night like this—always moored by some quay or tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I ever forget those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests Holland; they seem to have nothing in the world to do but throw stones and mud ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... same wise, these unable [useless] priests have been, and yet are, and shall be, the chief cause of pestilence of men, and murrain of beasts, and of bareness of the earth, and of all other mischiefs, to the time that Lords and Commons able them through grace for to know and to keep the Commandments of GOD, enforcing them then faithfully and charitably ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... said the youth, "and he that has taken a falcon's nest in the Scaurs of Polmoodie, has done something to brag of, my fair sister.—But that is all over now—a murrain on the nest, and the eyases and their food, washed or unwashed, for it was all anon of cramming these worthless kites that I was sent upon my present travels. Save that I have met with you, pretty sister, I could eat my dagger-hilt for vexation at my own folly. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... others by ourselves. The artistic temperament (a plague on the expression!) does not make us different from our fellowmen, or it would make us incapable of writing novels; and the average man (a murrain on the word!) is just like you and me, or he would not be average. It was Whitman who stamped a kind of Birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase; but Whitman knew very well, and showed very nobly, that the average man was full of joys ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have to report that I have sold the wool to Master Baldwin of Winchester at two shillings a bale more than it fetched last year, for the murrain among the sheep ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not take a very sharp farmer to see that although hot winds, or murrain, or hog cholera increase the leanness of his pocket-book, these things do not explain that irresistible and invariable current which bears such a large portion of what he does earn into the plethoric pocket-books of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... new cow, also, died in less than two weeks after father bought her. Then we had one ox, our old cow, and two young cattle we had raised from her, that we kept through the spring. In the summer the other ox had the bloody murrain and he died. ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, The plowman lost his sweat; and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard; The fold stands empty in the drowned field, And crows are fatted with the murrain flock." ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... day, he who would study the character and habits of these children of Nature must travel far away beyond the Rocky Mountains, where the murrain of perverted civilization has not yet spread. There he may still find the virtues and vices of the savage, and lead among those wild tribes that fascinating life of liberty which few have ever been known to abandon willingly for the restraints and ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the Murrain in Cows.—This disease is supposed to be caused by the cow having been stung about the mouth while feeding, in consequence of contact with some of the larger larvae of the moth (as of the Death's-head Sphynx, &c.), which have a soft fleshy horn on their tails, erroneously believed to be a sting. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... at one time hailstones and another frost, at another drought or a deluge of rain, or mildew, or other pest, will obliterate all the fair creations and designs of men; or behold, his fleecy flocks most fairly nurtured, then comes murrain, and the end most foul ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... where, ye PRELATES! is your light withdrawn? Where now the lustral influence of your lawn?[A] Where the meek crosier, and the crook of fleece, That guard the fold (not reckless of the peace)? Is there no wolf in all your pastur'd plains? No murrain rankling in your lambkins' veins? No lurking thief, by whom they nightly bleed? No arid spots refreshing streams that need? O why, forgetful of your solemn call, Sit ye, unmindful where the victims fall, To hire ONE SACRIFICE with cords be bound, And your anointed hands ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... every road. "For the belly one will play many tricks"; and Asirvadam, in financial straits, may teach dancing to nautch-girls; or he may play the mountebank or the conjurer, and with a stock of mantras and charms proceed to the curing of murrain in cattle, pip in chickens, and short-windedness in old women,—at the same time telling fortunes, calculating nativities, finding lost treasure, advising as to journeys and speculations, and crossing out crosses in love for any pretty dear who will cross the poor Brahmin's palm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... desires. Is it a sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why does Jan Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib, we are thy people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee in ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, 40 Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew, And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too; But now our sties are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch; Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, 45 And then we seek the shelter of a ditch; Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none Has yet been ours since your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the bunch and putting it into his coat.] Yes, and how to brew tea as'll curl up anyone's tongue within the mouth for a year—and fancy drinks for sheep with foot rot, and powders against the murrain and any other nonsense that you ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... persecution of this very year, hated him with a deadly hatred. His French alliances, his declaration of war with the Emperor, hindered the trade with Flanders and secured the hostility of the merchant class. The country at large, galled with murrain and famine and panic-struck by an outbreak of the sweating sickness which carried off two thousand in London alone, laid all its suffering at the door of the Cardinal. And now that Henry's mood itself became uncertain Wolsey knew his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... ruined," said a burly 'prentice, with a wooden shovel over his shoulder; "since every day a fresh ale-house is closed; and no new licences are granted. Murrain seize all such monopolists! They are worse than the fly in hops, or ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... "A murrain light on the snivelling bully! Let him stay at his own homestead, and not take mastership here, to trouble us with his humours ere the portion be his. His younger brother Oliver is worth a whole pack of such down-looked, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business; and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light upon thee, Mr. Townsend,—whatever a murrain may happen to be,—since you have disturbed me in the concoction of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... attached the disease, as they fancied, by some ceremonies, to a buffalo, and drove it across the Ganges, or into some other village. This latter course frequently caused fighting between the villagers. It was also found that a similar transmission of cakes had taken place on a former occasion, when a murrain attacked the cattle of the districts bordering Oude, and the disease was supposed to be stayed as soon as the said cakes reached the holy fanes of Hurdwar. The agitation was fostered, and false rumours founded thereon, prejudicial to government, were almost invariably propagated by Mussulmans, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and steal away unto his castle this very night when I did supplicate him to regale me with goodly viands around the board of that noble host, the gracious Sir Wralsy of Murdough. I would to heaven a murrain would seize the hearts of all such craven caitiffs who hath not in them the sweet courtesy and generous hospitality that doth so well become thee, O glorious and ever-to-be-mulcted Sir Knight of the well-stored wallet. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... burden to her natural protectors, and whose temper was soured by infirmities, especially if her language was vulgar and her appearance repulsive, ran the risk of being defamed as a witch. If in her neighbourhood a murrain seized the cattle, or a disease entered a family which baffled the little knowledge of the country practitioners—such as epilepsy, St. Vitus' dance, or St. Anthony's fire—it was ascribed to witchcraft, and vengeance was wreaked upon any reputed witch. In many parts of England she was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... symptom and concomitant of other diseases. It is one of the most fearful characteristics of murrain; it is the destructive accompaniment, or consequence, of phthisis. It is produced by the sudden disappearance of a cutaneous eruption; it follows the cessation of chronic hoose; it is the consequence of the natural or artificial suspension of every secretion. Were any secretion to be particularly ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... thought much of his agricultural venture at Belton for the last three or four days, and would hardly have been vexed had he been told that every head of cattle about the place had died of the murrain. Some general idea of the expediency of going on with a thing which he had commenced still actuated him; but it was the principle involved, and not the speculation itself, which interested him. But he could not explain all ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... Dredging and Fascine-work (as at Stettin and elsewhere), of Oder-canals, of Soap-boiler Companies, and Mulberry-and-Silk Companies; nay of ordaining Where, and where not, the Crows are to be shot, and (owing to cattle-murrain) No VEAL to be killed: [Seyfarth, ii. 71, 83, 81; Preuss,—Buch fur Jedermann,—i. 101-109; &c.] daily comes the tide of great and of small, and daily the punctual Friedrich keeps abreast of it,—and Dryasdust has noted the details, and stuffed them ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... a story "Compiled from the Memoirs of One Perkin Althorpe, Esq., Sometime Field-Coronet in His Majesty's Troop of Horse," and was sown thick with objurgation—"Ods-wounds!" "Body o' me!" "A murrain on thee!" "By my halidom!" and all the rest of the sweepings and tailings of Scott and the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Frogs, Lice, Flies, Murrain, Boils, Hails, Locusts, Darkness and Death of Firstborn," said ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... tithes. The prebend of Stanwick was worth about twice as much as any other. Thirdly, there was the Fabric Fund, arising from certain rents, oblations,[13] and licences, from the profits of St. Wilfrid's burning-iron (with which cattle were branded to keep off murrain),[14] and, in later days, of the pok-stone (which was probably regarded as in some way a preventive against the 'pokkes' of sheep and cattle); but especially from the farm of indulgences. When much building was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf. His frequent visitations have of late Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself. A proper man, a very proper man! A fellow that burns Trinidado leaf And sends smoke through his nostril like a flue! A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts— A murrain on him! Would Elizabeth In some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower— Ay, through the Traitor's Gate. Would he were dead. Within the year what worthy men have died, Persons of substance, civic ornaments, And here 's this gilt court-butterfly on wing! O thou ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ill-betiding croak) Bodes me no good.' No more she said, When poor blind Ball, with stumbling tread, 30 Fell prone; o'erturned the pannier lay, And her mashed eggs bestrewed the way. She, sprawling in the yellow road, Railed, swore and cursed: 'Thou croaking toad, A murrain take thy whoreson throat! I knew misfortune in the note.' 'Dame,' quoth the raven, 'spare your oaths, Unclench your fist, and wipe your clothes. But why on me those curses thrown? Goody, the fault was all your own; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... that never runs so thin The milk as when it leaves the milkman's tin; That every link the sausageman prepares Harbours some wandering Towser unawares. And Binns, the baker (whom a murrain seize!), Immune from fraud's accustomed penalties, Sells me a stuff compound of string and lead, And has the nerve to name the substance bread. But deafer far to the voice of conscience grown The type that cuts me off a pound of bone Wherefrom an ounce of fat forlornly drops, And calls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... country) men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and strive with, great busyness to speak French for to be more told of." "This manner," adds John of Trevisa, Higden's translator in Richard's time, "was much used before the first murrain (the Black Death of 1349), and is since somewhat changed. For John Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore in grammar school and construing of French into English; and Richard Pencrych learned this manner of teaching of him, as other men did of ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... to punish you? So these little flies must have greatly punished the Egyptians. The fourth plague was flies that filled the land and covered everything, to the great disgust of the people. The fifth plague was murrain—a disease that broke out among the cattle. The sixth plague was a disease—boils—that broke out on men and beasts, so that scarcely anyone could move on account of the pains and suffering. The seventh plague was hail, that fell in large pieces and destroyed all their ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Scientific men have acquainted us with the history of the Potato fungus, and this may eventually result in as efficient a remedy as that which renewed the vineyards of France. Such a remedy for the Potato murrain has yet to be discovered. Meanwhile, we must continue to resist the foe with the plough, spade, draining tool, and above all with a wise selection of sorts. It is an acknowledged fact that many Potatoes ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... to retort the imputation, and ask how a man of your profound sagacity could leave your fortune at the discretion of ignorant peasants? How could you be so blind as not to foresee the necessity of repairs, together with the danger of bankruptcy, murrain, or thin crop? Why did you not convert your land into ready money, and, as you have no connections in life, purchase an annuity, on which you might have lived at your ease, without any fear of the consequence? Can't you, from the whole budget of your philosophy, cull one apophthegm ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... book-worthy; but out of place. What the scurvy cur yelped against me, I forgive him as a Christian. Murrain upon such varlet vermin! It is but of late years that dignities have come to be reviled. The other parts of the Gospel were broken long before,- -this was left us; and now this likewise is to be kicked out of doors, amid the mutterings of such mooncalves ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... different, for these are truly parasitic on living plants, and, as far as already known, the species are confined to certain special plants, and cannot be made to vegetate on any other. The species which causes the potato murrain, although liable to attack the tomato, and other species of Solanaceae, does not extend its ravages beyond that natural order, whilst Peronospora parasitica confines itself to cruciferous plants. One species is restricted to the Umbelliferae, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... of any considerable farmer was seized with the murrain, he would send for one of the charm doctors to superintend the raising of a needfire. It was done by friction, thus: upon any small island, where the stream of a river or burn ran on each side, a circular booth was erected, of stone and turf, as it could be had, in which a semicircular ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... emulate the gods. It is wrong to think that to be moral is to be miserable. Nature's scheme for us, faithfully fulfilled, is always pleasurable. We have only to recognize it, and receive its benefits. Nothing on earth is luckier than man, if he but knew it. A murrain on ambition! Let us ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain o' thy ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... day, is evidently an act of fire-worship: a direct worship of Baal by a Christian community in the nineteenth century. There were other means of preventing disease spreading among cattle practised within this century. When murrain broke out in a herd, it was believed that, if the first one taken ill were buried alive, it would stop the spread of the disease, and that the other animals affected would then soon recover. Were a cow to cast her calf: if the calf were to be buried at the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... more in the story of him who, seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down the smithy—a story which has done duty ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... a grin on your countenance —to the end of your life; and of your descendants many will be similarly afflicted." Yet another member of the company, one Cailche, scurrilously abused and cursed Mochuda. To him Mochuda said:— "Dysentery will attack you immediately and murrain that will cause your death." The misfortune foretold befell him and indeed woeful misfortune and ill luck pursued many of them for their part in the wrong doing. When the king saw these things he became furious and, advancing—himself ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... began, it spread like a malignant murrain through all their ragged ranks, and there were none to rally the flying, none to direct those of more desperate bravery ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Engla passed her on the Fjord; and now the boy has sickened of some strange disease, and 'tis said he will die. Again, the drove of cattle owned by Hildmar Bjorn were herded home when she passed by. Now they are seized by the murrain plague! Tell your good saint Dyceworthy these things; if he can find no cure, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... routinists and their employers, the "general practitioners," who lived by selling pills and mixtures, and their drug-consuming customers, had to recognize that people could get well, unpoisoned. These dumb cattle would not learn it of themselves, and so the murrain ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... purchased and given. At the same time, prayers are offered to St. Como by those who desire children. In Midlothian, in 1268, the clergy instructed their flock to sprinkle water with a dog's phallus in order to avert a murrain. The same practice existed in Inverkeithing, and in Easter week priest and people danced round a wooden phallus.[87] Mr. Westropp, quoting an eighteenth-century writer,[88] says: "When the Huguenots took Embrun, they found among the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... I had my ship," said Arblaster, "I would 'a' been forth and safe on the high seas—I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, and I'm a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in russet shot him down, 'Murrain,' quoth he, and spake never again. 'Murrain' was the last of his words, and the poor spirit of him passed. 'A will never sail ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... them out for special notice is their method of divination for ascertaining the causes of misfortune and the remedies to be applied. All forms of animistic religion make it their chief business to avert the wrath of the gods, to which calamities of all kinds—sickness, storm, murrain, loss of harvest—are ascribed, by some kind of propitiation; and in this the Khasis are not singular. But it is somewhat surprising to find among them the identical method of extispicium which was in use among the Romans, as well as an analogous development in the shape ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... slain by murrain and holler horn and sich, and, not livin near Noo York, the flesh thereof ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... middle of the road with his sacks, and commenced crying his wares afresh. Almost at once Roger opened the door again. "A murrain upon you, noisy rascal," he called; "can you ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick |
