"Ribaldry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dwelling, naturally inspired, it was soon with feelings of thankfulness that they found themselves permitted to remain even there unmolested; for their ears were continually shocked, and their liveliest apprehensions often excited, by the profane vociferations, the noisy ribaldry, and lawless conduct of the tories, who, driven from their drenched tents, which afforded them but a feeble protection against the fury of the storm, had crowded into the lower rooms of the house, where, half stifled, and jostled for want of space, they filled ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Maister Edmunds beginneth againe his exorcismes, wherein he had not proceeded farre, but up cometh another spirit singing most filthy and baudy songs: every word almost that he spake was nothing but ribaldry. They that were present with one voyce affirmed that devill to be the author ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... praise which has been given to him, if he had been constant to the muckheap. He could never quite help approaching it now and then; but as time went on and the Empire substituted a sort of modified decency for the Feasts of Republican Reason and ribaldry, he tried things less uncomely. Adelaide de Meran (his longest single book), Tableaux de Societe, L'Officieux, and others, are of this class; and without presenting a single masterpiece in their own kind, they all, more or less, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... to be observed that the comedy of Greece is to be ranked under three distinct heads. The plays composed of ribaldry, defamatory licentiousness, indecency and loose jokes, which prevailed on the stage while the supreme power remained in the hands of the multitude, constitute the first of these; and it goes by the name of the old comedy. In those pieces no person whatever was spared. Though they were so modelled ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... neither soar with the wings of an angel nor flutter with the flaps of a moth: for there is as substantial a difference between light-heartedness and levity as between the crackling pyrotechnics that disturb the darkness of the night and the natural sunlight which enlivens the day. Indecency and ribaldry bring down a man to the level of the beast, divesting him of all his rational superiority and soul-dignity. What appears equally contemptible with the man who stoops to make grimaces, to utter expressions, to tell tales, in one word, to act the fool for the amusement of others, while ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... who went through the country or were attached to the lord's court to amuse the company, were a despised race because of their ribaldry, obscenity, cowardice, and unabashed self-debasement; and their newfangled dances and piping were loathsome to the old court-poets, who accepted the harp alone as an ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of impressions. If the blush which first started upon the cheek of a young person on the first hearing of an indecorous or profane sentiment, and continued for some time to be excited at repetitions of the same, should at length be so effectually laid asleep, that the impudent language of ribaldry can awaken it no more, it is clear, that a victory will have been gained over his moral feelings: and if he should remember (and what is to hinder him, when the occurrences of the stage are marked with strong action, and accompanied with impressive scenery) the language, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... instance, the well-established fact that immodesty of expression, the recollection derived, it may often be, accidentally and unwillingly from oral sources during the previous life, is one of the numerous phases of insanity; and not only are the song-fragments chanted by Ophelia, but even the ribaldry addressed to her by Hamlet, in the play-scene, vindicated, there being little doubt that Shakespeare intended the simulated madness of the latter through his intellectual supremacy to be equally true to nature, the manners of his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the crowd and out of the house. Drawing a reboso about her head she walked swiftly down the street and across the plaza. Sounds of ribaldry came from the lower end of the town, but the aristocratic quarter was very quiet, and she walked unmolested to the house of General Castro. The door was open, and she went down the long hall to the sleeping room of Dona Modeste. There was no ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... preparing from the time of Louis XIV., and is not yet ended in the time of President Faure. Next to the capital mistake of misconceiving the entire character and result of the Revolution, comes the insolence which treats the public men of France during a whole generation as mere subjects for ribaldry and caricature. From this uniform mockery, Mirabeau and Bonaparte, two of the least worthy of them, are almost alone exempted. This is a blunder in art, as well as a moral and historical offence. Men like Gondorcet, Danton, Hoche, Carnot, not to name a score ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... head. Now she was coming to the end of her painful walk through the corridors, for Heaven be praised! just before her was the door of her own anteroom. Once across that threshold she was safe from the coarse ribaldry that was making her heart throb and her cheeks tingle; for there the rights of the people ended, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... curious poetical scale in which he classes the Restoration dramatists thus:— Congreve—Genius 15, Judgment 16, Learning 14, Versification 14; Vanbrugh—14, 15,14,10; Farquhar—15, 15, 10, io. Unlike Goldsmith, unhappily, Farquhar's moral tone is not high; sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not always uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty. The plot of The Beaux-Stratagem is comparatively inoffensive, and ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... of a fight every moment, and if one had been started there is little doubt that it would have been short and bloody, for the conduct of the rowdy portion of the travellers had enraged the decent persons, to whom the thought of drunkenness and ribaldry at such a time was abhorrent, and they were quite ready to undertake the work of pitching the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... first the Lord's Prayer, and then others in succession mixed with which were so much ribaldry and profanity on the father's part as cut us to the heart. And here it was that we got a glimpse of the pre-eminent wickedness of the man-wickedness to him unknown, and all the worse because of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... offices and documents of the Church,—things not unnaturally shocking to piety, but not perhaps to be justly set down to any profane, much less to any specifically blasphemous, intention. When the quarrel arose between Reformers and "Papists," intentional ribaldry no doubt began. But such a thing as, for example, the "Missa de Potatoribus"[6] is much more significant of an unquestioning familiarity than of deliberate insult. It is an instance of the same bent of the human mind which has made very learned and conscientious lawyers ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... which important symbol of Ashanti power had been forwarded from head-quarters with an especial mission. It was delivered on the express understanding that it should be despatched to England for the acceptance of H.B. Majesty, and not be kept upon the coast, exposed to the ribaldry of the hostile Fantis. The weapon, said Prince Bwaki, is so old that no one knows its origin, and it is held so precious that in processions it precedes the Great Royal Stool, or throne, of Ashanti. The leopard-skin, bound with gold upon the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... identify Miss Wilson. Lamb's drama was "A Wife's Trial" in Blackwood for December, 1828. The same number of the Eclectic Review referred to Hood's parody of Lamb, "The Widow," as profaning Leslie's picture of the widow by its "heartless ribaldry." By the 2d parts of Blackwood Lamb referred, I imagine, to the pages on which his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... are scrawled over with obscene emblems and disgusting epigrams, so that this haunt of learning presents the aspect of the lowest brothel; and the professor's chair has become a more intolerable seat than the pillory, owing to the missiles flung at him and the ribaldry with which he is assailed. The manners and conversation of the students must have been disgusting beyond measure, to judge by a letter of complaint from a father detailing the contamination to which his son was exposed in the Roman class-rooms, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Consolations of Intercourse. Conducted with "shattering candour" (as one has said who is in spirit a member of this Club, though not yet, alas, inducted), the meetings may sometimes resolve themselves into a ribaldry, sometimes into a truthful pursuit of Beauty, sometimes into a mere logomachy. But in these symposiums, unmarred by the crude claim of duty, the Club does with single-minded resolve pursue the only lasting satisfaction allowed ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... and he carefully instructs his hopeful pupils in the best ways of avenging their wrongs upon society. Some in the prison are merry, and enjoy a dance, while others are indulging in obscene jests and ribaldry. Still, there are those that find means to labor and to work at repairing shoes or clothes in the midst of this ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... which he wields especially against the doctrine of incarnation. But no part of his work manifests such bitterness, and at the same time such a specious mode of argument, as his attack on the doctrine of redemption and substitutional atonement.(637) The work, in its satire and its blasphemous ribaldry, is a fit parallel to those of Voltaire. Every line is fresh from the writer's mind, and written with an acrimony which accounts for much of its influence. The religion which Paine substituted for ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... parishioners, though the companions of his jovial hours have long ceased to feel the slightest compunctions arising from inward respect, when they laugh at his heinously red nose, or chorus in his ribaldry. The islanders of the South Sea are not singular then, in mentally disjoining ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... for spirits or wine. This meeting with no attention, a Dutch concert began of songs in every possible, style—hunting songs, sea songs, jovial songs, love songs, comic songs, political songs, together with the lowest obscenity and ribaldry; all which, floated on the breeze through the sinuous labyrinths: of the mountains in company with the Catholic chaunts and anthems which attended the body of Captain le Harnois. Never man had merrier funeral. Singing being over, then commenced every possible variety of ingenious mimicry ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... being against every member of the writing brotherhood, it was natural that his reviews should not pass without severe criticisms. He often complained of the insults, ribaldry, Billingsgate, and Bear-garden language to which he was exposed; and some of his biographers have taken these lamentations seriously, and expressed their regret that so good a man should have been so much persecuted. But as he deliberately provoked ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... females occasioned scenes, more subjects of regret than of wonder. Thus, on the arrival of the Strathfieldsay (1834), the fair emigrants, 286, most of good character, were indiscreetly landed at high noon: 2,000 persons awaited them on the beach. Their feelings were outraged with ribaldry and insult: they were astounded at their reception, and many wept. The ladies of the colony protected and advanced them; and some, whose want drove them from their native country, remember the day with gratitude when they first pressed the soil of Tasmania. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed, an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... pistols and daggers—on their way to prison, like felons, and suffering every possible insult from the crowds of idle, vulgar people, who clustered around, and heartlessly made their failure the occasion for all manner of ribaldry and sport. As I looked upon this crowd of vile persons, and saw myself and friends thus assailed and persecuted, I could not help seeing the fulfillment of Sandy's dream. I was in the hands of moral vultures, and firmly held in their ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... occupation of folks destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Syconian engraver Canachus, being desirous to give us to understand that sloth, drowsiness, negligence, and laziness were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... this to Coupeau just as if her plan of life was well settled. Meanwhile, Coupeau never forgot his desire to possess her. He made a jest of everything she said, turning it into ribaldry and asking some very direct questions about Lantier. But he proceeded so gaily and which such a smile that she never thought of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... tact; ill-breeding &c (discourtesy) 895. courseness &c adj.^; indecorum, misbehavior. lowness, homeliness; low life, mauvais ton [Fr.], rusticity; boorishness &c adj.; brutality; rowdyism, blackguardism^; ribaldry; slang &c (neology) 563. bad joke, mauvais plaisanterie [Fr.]. [Excess of ornament] gaudiness, tawdriness; false ornament; finery, frippery, trickery, tinsel, gewgaw, clinquant^; baroque, rococo. rough ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... forgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play, but I must keep up the high key and act like the rest. Indeed for the most of the time I feel as they do, I suppose, but sometimes that sort of ribaldry and feelings of the ludicrous that made us joke, and prank, and cut up in genial companionships come over me, and I am suffocating with a glee out of place to this exalted society. Ah! it's good to feel you, my friend, so fresh and new from earth. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... religion in this manner, by several good people of every persuasion; and that[121] and the violent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the occasion that they had abated much of their rudeness for some time before, and were only roused by the spirit of ribaldry and atheism at the clamor which was made when the gentleman was first brought in there, and perhaps were agitated by the same devil when I took upon me to reprove them; though I did it at first with all the calmness, temper, and good manners that I could, which, for a while, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... churches; others to the taverns. Here prayers went up; there wine went down. The petitions of the pious were matched by the ribaldry of the profligate. Some made their wills; others wasted their wealth in revelry, eager to get all the pleasure out of life that remained for them. Many freely gave away their property, hoping, by ridding themselves of the goods of this earth, to establish ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the contrary, they decidedly relish that sort of thing, and greet with positive hilarity the efforts of some sympathizing rooster to cheer her. Fie, upon such natures! If they must have an outlet for their ribaldry, let them take PUNCHINELLO'S advice and select such instances as that recently furnished in Sacramento, where a hen took charge of a nest of kittens, and resolutely maintained it against the parent cat. Here the case ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... least defect of the English comedies is their offensiveness. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve. Decency is not merely violated in the grossest manner in single speeches, and frequently in the whole plot; but in the character of the rake, the fashionable debauchee, a moral scepticism is directly preached up, and marriage is the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the romance of Richard Lion-Heart, another manner of man than himself. We said nought to this, not choosing to dine in such high company, but rode up under the walls of Roye, defying the Duke with open ribaldry, such as no manant could bear but he would take cudgel in hand to defend his honour. Our intent was, if the Duke accepted battle, to fight with none but him, if perchance we might take him, and hold him as hostage for the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... of these later poems are free from grammatical incorrectness or ambiguity of expression. Some are debased by the more serious fault of ribaldry and profaneness. His irreligion, however, seems to have been rather the fluctuating of a mind that had lost its hold on truth for a time, than the scepticism of one confirmed in error. He acknowledges his dependence on a Creator, though he ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... thrown them at it. I ever consider'd, that Abuse from such Scriblers, who write for a Livelihood, can no more be thought an Affront, than a Barber's taking you by the Nose; 'tis his Trade, and the Wretch would starve if you stopt him. What harm did all their Ribaldry do me? I neither eat, nor drunk, nor slept the worse for it. I don't suppose, that the scape Goat, which the Jews loaded with Curses, and drove into the Wilderness, either died by their Maledictions, or grew a whit the leaner for them; nor was I ever the worse for all I met with. ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... of incapacity! In all kindness to Maga, we warn her, that, though the nature of this work precludes us from devoting space to the exposure, there may come a time when the public shall be themselves able to distinguish ribaldry from reasoning, and may require some better and higher qualifications in their critics of art, than the experience of a school-boy, and the capacities of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and amusing stories and the days to gambling. The soldiers' lodge, when the soldiers are not in session, is a very theater of amusement; all sorts of jokes are made and obscene stories are told, scarcely a woman in the camp escaping the ribaldry; but when business is in order ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... and the cloisters of convent and monastery, which had hitherto been disturbed only by footsteps gliding quietly from cell to chapel, or the hum of voices mingling in devotion, now echoed the tread of armed ruffians and resounded with ribaldry and imprecations. An old man, who was for a time my teacher, told me many a tale of those days. He had narrowly escaped, once, by concealing himself under the floor of his room. He said that he felt the pressure, as his pursuers repeatedly passed over him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... the water; but to the Knight's great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us, what queer old put[190] we had in the boat? with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first, but at length assuming a face of magistracy, told us, "That if he were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her Majesty's subjects were no more to be abused by ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... must be tolerated for their age. It cannot be denied that some of them try our patience, in the epitaphs even more perhaps than in the carvings, and "merely mock whom they were meant to honour." Two out of a vast number may be selected as painful evidences of a departed century's tombstone ribaldry. The first, from a village near Bath, is a deplorable mixture of piety and profanity, sentiment ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... great elm tree. He saw all its branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke in upon his ears. He heard their shouts, the snatches of their songs, their noise, all the ribaldry of men merry ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Frederick Mason's words verbatim, as he seldom opened his lips without an oath, and inter-larded his talk with coarse jests in English and fragments of ribaldry in vile French, till it would scarce be intelligible to the ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the ruffians who had undertaken to teach us modesty swarmed in too. They dragged a sheep into the lecture-room, lighted pipes, produced bottles, drank, smoked, and abused us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals with their howls and ribaldry: that was intended to show the professor he should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students. The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine, came pouring in, with no worse motive, probably, than to see the lark. Some ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... there are enough babies born, too many of them are born only to die in infancy. We need no further proof of the urgent need for conscientious inquiry, call it by what name you please. The science of common sense is all-sufficient. The seemingly intelligent individual who can only find material for ribaldry in this connection is a more serious buffoon than he imagines. It is apparent that our methods are wrong. Any constructive effort to correct them is commendable. When it is stated that 20 per cent. of the American women are unable to bear children, and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... the ocean it may be safely said, that the intelligence of the reader forces their criticism up to some decent standard of honest painstaking. We may thus explain the bewilderment which came over us at that burst of vulgar ribaldry from the leading British press, in which the organs above named have achieved a scandalous preeminence. Vibrating from the extreme of shallowness to the extreme of sufficiency, scorning to be limited in abuse by adhering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... pass the jest along the trenches Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches, You touched its ribaldry and made it fine. You stood beside us in our pain and weakness. We're glad to think You understand our weakness. Somehow it seems to help us not ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... has justly remarked, that the delicacy of Chaucer's ancient tale has suffered even in the hands of Shakespeare; but in those of Dryden it has undergone a far deeper deterioration. Whatever is coarse and naked in Shakespeare, has been dilated into ribaldry by the poet laureat of Charles the second; and the character of Pandarus, in particular, is so grossly heightened, as to disgrace even the obliging class to whom that unfortunate procurer has bequeathed his name. So far as this play is to be considered as an alteration ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and his "Fatal Dowry" is preserved in Rowe's plagiarism from it, in the "Fair Penitent." But the low moral tone of the time is indicated in all these works, in which heroic sentiments, rising often even to religious rapture, are mingled with scenes of the grossest ribaldry. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... it, making all parties laugh at one another; the Tories at the Liberals, by his defeating all Liberal measures; the Liberals at the Tories, by their consciousness of getting everything that is to be got in Church and State; and all at one another, by substituting low ribaldry for argument, bad jokes for principle, and an openly avowed, vainglorious, imbecile vanity as a panoply to guard himself from the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... its intention, and in its dignity grew too often dull. Still for a time fabliaux were written; but the age of the jongleurs was over. Virelais, rondeaux, ballades, chants royaux were the newer fashion; and the old versified tale of mirth and ribaldry was by the middle of the century ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... this buck was led seemed surprising; for the animal had not only his natural ferocity to offer against the skill of his antagonists, but he possessed strength and all the madness born of the human sounds to which he had been unaccustomed,—the loud ribaldry, and laughter of men and women, the whistle, and shrill cries of boys and frighted infants. Submitting to my ignorance, I must say that I had never seen any large animal killed, and did not know how the operation was performed; and with a feeling of the most horrible infatuation ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... have been sold, though without profit to the author. The father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so Bentham believed. The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other accusations was said to be not only the translator but the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... beneath derisive skies, The victims bare, bewildered heads arise: Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced With humour blinding as the doom it faced: Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, But only (Allah be exalted!) true, And only, as the Seraph showed that night, Delighting to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... rapsodio. Rhetoric parolarto, retoriko. Rhetorical elokventa, retorika. Rheumatic reuxmatisma. Rheumatism reuxmatismo. Rhinoceros rinocero. Rhomb rombo. Rhombus rombo. Rhubarb rabarbo. Rhyme rimi. Rhythm ritmo. Rib ripo. Ribald malcxasta, dibocxa. Ribaldry dibocxo—ajxo. Ribbon rubando. Rice rizo. Rich, to grow ricxigxi. Rich ricxa. Riches ricxeco. Rid malembarasi, liberigi. Riddle (sieve) kribrilo. Riddle enigmo, logogrifo. Ride rajdi. Ridge supro, pinto. Ridge (agricul.) sulko. Ridicule moki. Ridiculous ridinda. Riding-master ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... "Dialogue, conteyninge the Number in Effecte of all the Proverbes in the English Tunge, 1561." There are more editions of this little volume than Warton has noticed. There is some humour in his narrative, but his metre and his ribaldry are heavy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... voices to their utmost. Many of those who were banded together to support the religion of their country, even unto death, had never heard a hymn or psalm in all their lives. But these fellows having for the most part strong lungs, and being naturally fond of singing, chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that occurred to them, feeling pretty certain that it would not be detected in the general chorus, and not caring much if it were. Many of these voluntaries were sung under the very nose of Lord George Gordon, who, quite unconscious of their ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... it yet confess'd, Your people, sir, are partial in the rest: Foes to all living worth except your own, And advocates for folly dead and gone. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold. Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote, And beastly Skelton[143] heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the 'Faery Queen'; A Scot will fight for 'Christ's Kirk o' the Green';[144] 40 And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, He swears the Muses met him at ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... her translations of the Amphitruo, Rudens and Epidicus (issued in 1683), she apologizes for Plautus on the ground that he had to win approval for his comedies from an audience used to the ribaldry of the Saturae. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... missed its thrust was cut clear into the bone, a groove four inches long, and in the selfsame fraction of a second the catlike Bill, from two lengths distant, darted his red tongue in and out at Jan in cold ribaldry. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... conjuror, and holding out live and plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a spectacle as melancholy as it is rare, and of which the less said the better. It has a church with some lurid glass of indifferent quality, and (if I remember rightly) a curious dovecote of a tower. The ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... is so, especially if a truth about religion is uttered. They are apt to think that all truths about religion are blasphemous. It is wonderful how ready good women are to find blasphemy where it is not, and to confuse reasoning with ribaldry." ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... exhausted his vocabulary of jay-ribaldry, screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate into Flint's ears, shut up his tail like a fan, and darted off, a streak of blue and gray. The Butterfly Man's eyes followed him smilelessly; then they came back and dwelt for a moment ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... human genius. What has the Romantic school to exhibit, after its inimitable founder, as a set-off to this long line of greatness? The ephemeral and now forgotten lights of the British stage—the blasting indecencies of Beaumont and Fletcher; the vigorous ribaldry of Dryden; the shocking extravagances of the recent French and Spanish stage; the Tour de Nesle, and other elevating pieces, which adorn the modern Parisian theatre, and train to virtuous and generous feeling the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... of phrase, in fantastic vapourings and promises of the dreadful things that are going to be done to the enemy. They deal some shrewd hits at the glaring faults of their subject, his outrageous abuse of authorities, his profanity, his ribaldry, his irrelevance; but in point of the three last qualities there is not much to choose between him and them. One line of counter attack they did indeed hit upon, which was followed up for generations with no small success against the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... enchanted Woods on the Theatres, by the Great. As she has often observ'd with much Concern how indecent an Education is usually given these innocent Creatures, which in some Measure is owing to their being plac'd in Rooms next the Street, where, to the great Offence of chaste and tender Ears, they learn Ribaldry, obscene Songs, and immodest Expressions from Passengers and idle People, and also to cry Fish and Card-matches, with other useless Parts of Learning to Birds who have rich Friends, she has fitted up proper and neat Apartments ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to relieve mankind from the pervading pressure of unlimited monarchy, they would have done more harm than good. By the fanatical treachery with which, violating the Parliament and the law, they contrived the death of King Charles, by the ribaldry of the Latin pamphlet with which Milton justified the act before the world, by persuading the world that the Republicans were hostile alike to liberty and to authority, and did not believe in themselves, they gave strength and reason to the current of Royalism, which, at the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... are a lady; she is only a common woman. Things would be insults to you which she only laughs at. I cannot allow you to expose yourself to the brutal ribaldry of the ruffians below. If a father had his daughter here, he would lock her up, as I ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... starving men, gathered in the streets of Paris. Harangues against the king and the aristocrats rendered them delirious with rage. They crowded all the avenues to the Tuileries, burst through the gates and over the walls, dashed down the doors and stove in the windows, and, with obscene ribaldry, rioted through all the apartments sacred to royalty. They thrust the dirty red cap of Jacobinism upon the head of the King. They poured into the ear of the humiliated queen the most revolting and loathsome execrations. There was no hope for Louis but in ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... little fetish made of turnips and cabbages. He was as fanatical a devotee of vegetarianism as others have been of a middle state or adult baptism; and, after having torn through a life of spiteful controversy with his fellow-men, and ribaldry of all sacred things, he thus expressed the one weight hanging on his conscience, that "on one occasion, when tempteed by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of Scotland, he ventured to eat a few potatoes dressed under the roast, nothing ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... to come at his audience; and Daniel, when he sees my friend Greenhat come in, can give him a good hint, and cry out, 'This is only for the saints! the regenerated!' By this force of action, though mixed with all the incoherence and ribaldry imaginable, Daniel can laugh at his diocesan, and grow fat by voluntary subscription, while the parson of the parish goes to law for half his dues. Daniel will tell you, 'It is not the shepherd, but the sheep with the bell, which the flock ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... these misjudged young men had committed no greater crime than that of taking a boat up the river, or a drive in a dog-cart. If a group of them should be seen by him laughing and talking, he instinctively concluded their topic must be ribaldry, whereas they would perhaps be only joking at the expense of some eccentric professor, or else chaffing one of their own number. And so it happened that Tom failed in time to distinguish between the really bad and such as he only imagined to be bad; and from his habit ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... I sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coarse associates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my anticipations of its consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... public sentiment. Under a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honoured institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... places, fair and shining between the many tresses! She had upon her snow-white brow a ruby circlet, less fertile in rays of fire than her black eyes, still moist with tears from her hearty laugh. She even threw her slipper at a statue gilded like a shrine, twisting herself about from very ribaldry and allowed her bare foot, smaller than a swan's bill, to be seen. This evening she was in a good humour, otherwise she would have had the little shaven-crop put out by the window without more ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... there was formerly a rude custom for those who were sailing upon the Thames, to accost each other as they passed, in the most abusive language they could invent, generally, however, with as much satirical humour as they were capable of producing. Addison gives a specimen of this ribaldry, in Number 383 of The Spectator, when Sir Roger de Coverly and he are going to Spring-garden. Johnson was once eminently successful in this species of contest; a fellow having attacked him with some coarse raillery, Johnson answered ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved by his comrade's passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse supplied the necessary small talk till Learoyd picked ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... place, has come, having stitched to her no leathern phallus hanging down, red at the top, and thick, to set the boys a laughing; nor yet jeered the bald-headed, nor danced the cordax; nor does the old man who speaks the verses beat the person near him with his staff, keeping out of sight wretched ribaldry; nor has she rushed in with torches, nor does she shout iou, iou; but has come relying on herself and her verses. And I, although so excellent a poet, do not give myself airs, nor do I seek to deceive you by twice and ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... doubt that the English sparrows are regular bullies. They do not fight other birds so much as they hector them, making life intolerable by their ribaldry, coarse jests, and prying manners. Some birds, especially many of our beautiful native species, are sensitively organized, and cannot endure such boorish society as the badly bred foreigners furnish. That as much as anything has driven our genteel ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... screamed and darted out of the way, and men and women started back, scowling and muttering; when a blockade of wagons and push-carts forced them to stop, the children gathered about and jeered, and a group of hoodlums loafing by a saloon flung ribaldry at them; but Oliver never turned his ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... mess of dissolute mates and midshipmen of the old Queen, 98, who held a sort of examination of ribaldry for a rank below that ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... disreputable drinking cellar, and disappeared from my sight down its steps. A great shout greeted him, and the rattle of tankards on a table, as he joined what was evidently his coterie. Standing outside, I heard song and ribaldry within. The heir-presumptive to the throne of the Empire was too obviously a drunken brawler; a friend and comrade of the lowest scum ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... up—no crouching over the handle-bars like the Saturday afternoon shopmen! Wind in your hair, the broad blue Cotswold slopes about you, every ounce of leg-drive straining on the pedals—three minutes of it intoxicates you. You crawl up-wind roaring the most glorious nonsense, ribaldry, and exultation into the face of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... architecture of the day, and commenting on them in a caustic, colloquial style—large, loose, discursive—a blend of Ruskin, Carlyle and Whitman, yet all Mr. Sullivan's own. He descends, at times, almost to ribaldry, at others he rises to poetic and prophetic heights. This is all a part of his method alternately to shame and inspire his pupil to some sort of creative activity. The syllabus of Mr. Sullivan's scheme, as it existed in his mind during the writing of Kindergarten ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... shame and horror when I contrasted this ghastly calmness of pale ice and the brightness of the holy stars looking down upon it, with our swinish revelry in the cabin, and I thought with loathing of the drunken ribaldry of the pirate and my own tipsy songs piercing the ear of the mighty spirit of this solitude. The exercise improved my spirits; I stepped the length of the little raised deck briskly, my thoughts very busy. On a sudden ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the offenders themselves, would—a few of them—hang down their heads, and close their eyes in the unsufferable agony of shame; but by far the greater number would shout forth words of bold defiance or indecent ribaldry, would protrude the mocking tongue, or spit forth curses with dire volubility. Then would rise the shouts of gamins, then would come the thick volley of eggs, fish-heads, butcher's-offal, and all the garbage of the market, aimed unerringly by many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... laughter. Next door to our room was one where a man sold gin, under the name of tape; and here, from morning till night, the people kept up a horrible revelry;—and sang—sad songs some of them: but my dear little girl was, thank God! unable to understand the most part of their ribaldry. She never used to go out till nightfall; and all day she sat working at a little store of caps and dresses for the expected stranger—and not, she says to this day, unhappy. But the confinement sickened her, who had been used to happy country ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consequently most unnatural, Events and Incidents; the most exaggerated Thoughts; the most verbose and bombast Expression; the most pompous Rhymes, and thundering Versification. In Comedy, nothing was so sure to please, as mean buffoonry, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. Yet even in these our Author's Wit buoys up, and is born above his subject: his Genius in those low parts is like some Prince of a Romance in the disguise of a Shepherd or Peasant; a certain Greatness ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... partakes of the nature of the practical joke, and though it no doubt amused the courtiers of Elizabeth, is too clumsy for a more cultivated taste. But although Sidney's comic scenes may no longer amuse, it must be said that they are free from the low coarseness and ribaldry which have furnished merriment to times which pretended to a much higher standard of wit and education than his own. An interesting contrast may be made between a comic passage of the "Arcadia,"[79] representing a fight between two cowards, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... to flicker; from the town's buildings sounds began to issue—multisonous, carrying the message of ribaldry unrestrained. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth, the voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more distinctly, more terribly than it ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the "Representative Hall," "in Boylston Hall," &c. And we learn at their "talk," in the Representative Hall, they drew a large audience, and that audience was so indiscreet, (not to say indecorous or riotous,) as to cheer and applaud Apes in his ribaldry, misrepresentation and nonsense. Really, it looks to us, as if there was much misunderstanding upon the subject of the Marshpee difficulties. If there is any thing wrong we would have it put right; but how does the case appear. At the time of Apes' coming among them, ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... entered upon a campaign against the smaller fry of the pen with a vigor, a deadly earnestness, and a determination to wound, unparalleled in the history of letters. One of the most gifted of his critics, the late Rector of Lincoln College, speaks of the "Dunciad" roundly as "an amalgam of dirt, ribaldry, and petty spite," and M. Taine brought against it the more fatal charge of tediousness. But even if one admits the indiscriminate nature of that onslaught which confuses Bentley with such creatures of a day as Ralph and Oldmixon, it is impossible not to admire the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... and readiness of speech are all vividly portrayed, while his mettlesome temper and his arrogance are alike essential to his role, and are true to the record of the historical D'Ambois. But there is a coarseness of fibre in Chapman's creation, an occasional foul-mouthed ribaldry of utterance which robs him of sympathetic charm. He has in him more of the swashbuckler and the bully than of the courtier and the cavalier. Beaumont and Fletcher, one cannot help feeling, would have invested him with more refinement and grace, and would have given ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... a blasphemer to be stoned, could not teach one Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets of Israel from scandalous ribaldry. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... conversations and correspondence which should have been confidential, were brought before the public eye; the ruthless warfare was carried into the bosom of private life; neither age nor sex were spared, the daily press teemed with ribaldry and falsehood; and even the tomb was not held sacred from the rancorous hostility which distinguished the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... who kept up any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which was at least conformable, but in his appearance of alacrity and cheerful health. Seeing that I suffered as much from the ribaldry of my fellow-guests as from my bodily pains, he came and sat by my side, and encouraged me with the assurance that it was far better to wait for the brother-in-charge to awake in the course of nature than to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... of a man who had lost all sense of decency. Such a potion was too strong to be administered even in a time when great license was allowed, and men were not over-nice. But Byron chooses fifty armour-bearers of that class of men who would find indecent ribaldry about a wife a good joke, and talk about the 'artistic merits' of things which we hope would ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... slandered with stories, as if Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles's use, freeborn women that came to see the works. The comic writers of the town, when they had got hold of this story, made much of it, and bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent, charging him falsely with the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the birds kept by Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used to give presents of peacocks to Pericles's female ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... her friends in and snapped on the lights, the apartment, save for the delirious spaniel, was unoccupied. She flung down her hat, coat, and gloves, then, with the help of Jim, prepared glasses and a cooler. Lorelei was restless; the thought of more wine, more ribaldry, revolted her, and yet she was grateful for this delay, brief though it promised to be. Any interruption, trivial or tragic, would be welcome. Meanwhile her ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... specially on this, my brothers, you all know why. Let us pass from it, remembering that till the nineteenth century this story provoked only devotion not ribaldry, and it is only with the coming in of the grosser type of western thought that you have these ideas put into the Bhagavad-Purana. I would to God that the Rishis had taken away the Shrimad Bhagavata from a race that ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... not for him to stand associated, for a single hour, with an assemblage of men who begin with hypocrisy, and end with downright blackguardism. It is not for him to watch the progress of the coming ribaldry, and to hit the well selected moment when talk and turbulence and boisterous merriment are on the eve of bursting forth upon the company, and carrying them forward to the full acme and uproar of their enjoyment. It is quite in vain to say, that he has only sanctioned one part of such ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... to obey, as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have been taught to deride religion, will laugh at one whose chief stores of comfort ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... "infidel," a "traitor," an "apostate," and even as "an unclean being"; servants left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising of light ribaldry ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... certainly not be consistent with the most lax modern notions of decency. The Court of which he was the centre certainly included a good many persons who might have at once dictated Massinger's most dignified sentiments and enjoyed his worst ribaldry. Such, for example, if Clarendon's character of him be accurate, would have been the supposed 'W. H.,' the elder of the two Earls of Pembroke, with whose family Massinger was so closely connected. But ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... youth raised his heavy eyelids and looked with bewildered eyes at his sister. One of the girls tried to laugh, but there was something in the insane lightness of his eyes and the agony of hers that stifled the ribaldry in its birth. His face was as pale as hers, a pallor that was accentuated by dark hair, matted impotently over his forehead. But there was a careless, debonair charm about the fellow that made him stand out apart from the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... adopted the dialect of the common people, and were more or less popular in their character. More details will be given when we examine them in their completer form. All such parts of these early scenic entertainments as were not mere conversation or ribaldry, were probably ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... talk, ribaldry, buffoonery, P; harlatrye, jesting Lat. scurrilitas (eutrapelia), W; ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... and although the popularity of Hood's "Comic Annual" and Cruikshank's "Comic Almanac" was pointed to, they would have nothing to do with a weekly, however much it professed to supersede previous ribaldry with clean wit ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of exposure to danger, and great mental anguish, I was driven ashore amid the desolation of this sand. This comrade of yours found me scarce alive, ministered to my sore need, protected me through the hours of the night, stood but now between me and your ribaldry, counting his life but little beside the reputation of a woman. He may not wear the latest Paris fashions, Monsieur, but he ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... long a familiarity with reproach, his sensibility to the scandalous imputation must now have been much diminished, if not entirely extinguished. The other poem is partly in the same strain, but extended to greater length, by a mixture of common jocular ribaldry of the Roman soldiers, expressed nearly in the same terms which Caesar's legions, though strongly attached to his person, scrupled not to sport publicly in the streets of Rome, against their general, during the celebration of his triumph. In a word, it deserves to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Woodcock, within the limits of the present town of Attleborough. Woodcock kept a sort of tavern at what was called the Ten Mile River, which tavern he was enjoined by the court to "keep in good order, that no unruliness or ribaldry be permitted there." He was a man of some consequence, energetic, reckless, and not very scrupulous in regard to the rights of the Indians. An Indian owed him some money. As Woodcock could not collect the debt, he paid himself by going into the Indian's house and taking his ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... in senseless ribaldry and inebriety (continues the reviewer) this song might be deemed very fine; but we shrewdly suspect that if the lines had been spoken at the theatre instead of being sung, the audience would ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... front under repair supplied a scantling. Plooie was hustled upon it. He fell off. They jammed him back again. He clung, wide-eyed, white-faced, and silent. The mob, for it was that now, bore him with jeers and jokes and ribaldry along the edge of ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... very simple to suppose that I should turn from the discussion of measures and policy to notice your scandal. I will do no such thing. I am not so crazed. Your lies and calumnies about my political life I will examine forthwith. For that loose ribaldry I shall have a word hereafter, if the jury desire ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... wither in an hour, and the inheritance of their children fall to ashes. By the red, consuming light, poured past the straggling Confederate soldiers, dead to the acknowledgment of private rights, and sacking shop and home with curses and ribaldry; the suburban citizens and the menial negroes adopted their examples; carrying off whatever came next their hands, and with arms full of "swag," dropping it in the highway, lured by some dearer plunder. Negroes, with baskets of stolen ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... knew not where to run first." On the other hand, we find complaints that young fops hindered business by lolling on the counter an hour longer than was necessary, and annoyed the young women who served them with ingenious ribaldry.] ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... wafted over in a sculler. A slave that hath an extraordinary gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than would make all the guard a posset. His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... being ruffled by this ribaldry, or from showing resentment to its authors, submitted to it with the utmost humility, and only seemed the more grateful to his own brethren, who, by their respectful demeanor, appeared anxious to do ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... me to know that, and he wanted me to know also that the knowledge had come to me from my bishop. I should have thought evil of any one who had sent me the vile ribaldry. But coming from him, it ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... his hair to its highest pitch of Struwel Peterdom. Passers-by turned round to look at them, for well-dressed Englishmen do not often sit outside a Marchand des vins, especially one with such hair. But passers-by are polite in France and do not salute the unfamiliar with ribaldry. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... sleeping hut and from the Battery Command Post I used to hear for days afterwards the Italian Infantry singing in great choruses, far into the night. There was triumph in their songs, and there was ribaldry and there was longing. I thought I knew what dreams were in their hearts, and, if I was right, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... all," said Bob Assingham, "as if you were playing some game with its rules drawn up—though who's to come down on you if you break them I don't quite see. Or must you do it in three guesses—like forfeits on Christmas eve?" To which, as his ribaldry but dropped from her, he further added: "How much of anything will have to be left for you to be able to go on ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... answer, if to that youth's education had been added the common forms of a religious one, he would have been—not perhaps a worse fellow, but a far more offensive one, and harder to influence for good. Inclined to scoff, he would have had the religious material for jest and ribaldry ready to his hand; while if he had wanted to start as a hypocrite, it would have been specially easy. The true teaching for children is persons, history and doctrine in the old sense of the New Testament—instruction in righteousness, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... because they believed truly and sincerely in Jesu Christ. But of that great and foul number of harlots, fornicators, adulterers, what one have they at any time (I say not killed, but) either excommunicated, or once attached? Why! voluptuousness, adultery, ribaldry, whoredom, murdering of kin, incest, and others more abominable parts, are not these counted sin at Rome? Or, if they be sin, ought "Christ's vicar, Peter's successor, the most holy father," so lightly and slightly to bear them, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel |
