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Saracen   Listen
noun
Saracen  n.  Anciently, an Arab; later, a Mussulman; in the Middle Ages, the common term among Christians in Europe for a Mohammedan hostile to the crusaders.
Saracens' consound (Bot.), a kind of ragwort (Senecio Saracenicus), anciently used to heal wounds.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Saracen" Quotes from Famous Books



... and oftener in the fog of London as they made ready to ride to Ridley Court. There was a railway station two miles from the Court, but Belward had had enough of railways. He had brought his own horse Saracen, and Jacques's broncho also, at foolish expense, across the sea, and at a hotel near Euston Station master and man mounted and set forth, having seen their worldly goods bestowed by staring porters, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... II. is reported to have reached the Papal chair by Satan's assistance. In his youth Silvester was a monk, but he deserted the monastery, and became a follower of the devil. He went to Spain in search of magical instruction. Being introduced to a Saracen philosopher skilful in magic, he became his disciple. But his stay with the learned man was short; for seeing a valuable book of necromancy belonging to his instructor, he stole it. Fleeing to a place of safety, he studied the black art very closely. His intercourse with Satan was frequent. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... attended the proctor, with such a staring addition to the natural ghastliness of his features, that his visage bore a very apt resemblance to some of those ferocious countenances that hang over the doors of certain taverns and ale-houses, under the denomination of the Saracen's head. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... and Saracen making common cause in Palestine against the Kharezmians. These Mongols, who only appeared on the stage of history for a brief period of four years, swept through the country, captured Jerusalem, massacred all on whom they could lay hands, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... Saracen Went down, both horse and man; For through their ranks we rode like corn, So ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... Second went to make up in the next world his quarrel with Thomas-a-Becket; and Richard Coeur de Lion made all England resound with preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many zealous adventurers, who eagerly flocked under his banner in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil, which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations, was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, which he appropriated ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... desolate places of Westmoreland and Cumberland, that here was a son of Ishmael walking in the wilderness of Edom. The coruscating nimbus of his curling and profuse black hair, black as erebus, strengthened the Saracen impression of his features and complexion. He wanted only a turban on his head, and a spear in his right hand, to be perfect as a Bedouin. But it affected us as all things are affecting which record ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... meek and suffering one, though it never aired its grievances. These, however, were the chief subjects of conversation during the visit, which, in spite of every failure in dramatic propriety, was always spoken of in after days as "the Crusade." It came to an end in due course, the Saracen host retiring ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... the whole land. We rode into some of these forests, for they were no less, and finally pitched our tent in one of them, belonging to the palace of the former Abdallah Pasha, within a mile of Acre. The old Saracen aqueduct, which still conveys water to the town, overhung our tent. For an hour before reaching our destination, we had seen it on the left, crossing the hollows on light stone arches. In one place I counted fifty-eight, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... wrath blazed out against the celestial Patron. "He's not fit for his job," said some; "let's get a new saint! The ruffian, the son of an impure mother—up to his tricks, was he? Ah, the cut-throat, the Saracen, the old paederast: ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... the conquered nations: Islam, the Sword, or Tribute.] The pressure brought to bear on the inhabitants of the countries overrun by Saracen arms was of the most stringent character. They were offered the triple alternative—Islam, the Sword, or Tribute. The first brought immediate relief. Acceptance of the faith not only stayed the enemy's ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield, and on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibuses going eastward seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coachyard of the Saracen's Head Inn; its portals guarded by two Saracens' heads and shoulders frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The Inn itself garnished with another Saracen's head, frowns upon you from the top of the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... the events succeed each other with almost breathless rapidity, and balancing success alternately from one side to the other, without letting it ever incline decisively to either. Tasso has adopted the same plan in his Jerusalem Delivered, and the contests of the Christian knights and Saracen leaders with the lance and the sword, closely resemble those of the Grecian and Trojan chiefs on the plain of Troy. Ariosto has carried it still further. The exploits of his Paladins—their adventures on earth, in air, and water; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... very ambitious article which by means of weights and wheels not only indicated the hours but the course of the sun, moon, and planets. Now who invented such an affair as that we do not know. It must, however, have been some ingenious Saracen who certainly could have heard nothing about the Abbott of Hirschau and his striking bells. Indeed, when one considers the superstition of the age, we cannot but grant it was almost fortunate a clock such as ours was not then ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did not know ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... and guardian of modern civilization, paced with restless, ever-present steps, around the borders of that small world of light which he had built up, half blindly, in the overwhelming dark, and with two-handed blows beat back, with the iron mace of Germany, the savage assaults of Saracen and Sclave, of black Dane and brutal Wendt, and smote on till he died smiting, for order, and law, and faith, and so saved Europe, and, let us humbly hope, his own rude but true soul alive! are not the thanks of all the world well due, that Karl ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... about a quarter of an hour. Tom groaned most pitiably. I looked at him, and if I were to live for a thousand years, I shall never forget the expression of his face. His lips were blue, and—no matter, I'm not clever at portrait painting: but imagine an old-fashioned Saracen's Head—not the fine handsome fellow they have stuck on Snow Hill, but one of the griffins of 1809—and you have Tom's phiz, only it wants touching with all the colours of a painter's palette. I was quite frightened, and could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... dismounted to tend the dying archbishop they returned and cast darts from afar, slaying Veillantif, the faithful war-horse, and piercing the hero's armour. Still nearer and nearer sounded the clarions of Charlemagne's army in the defiles, and the Saracen host fled for ever, leaving Roland alone, on foot, expiring, amid ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... in tilts and debt, When plumes were high and prudence low, And every knight felt bound to "go The pace," and just like Richard do, By running his purse and a Paynim through. Yet do not suppose that Vidomar Was ever a knight in the Holy War: For Richard many a Saracen's head Had lopped before the old Count was dead; And Richard was home from Palestine, Home from the dungeon of Tiernstein, And many a Christian corpse had made, Ere the time in which the story is laid. But the fashion he set became so strong, That Vidomar was hurried along, And ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... of adventures to prove his knighthood. He falls in with a crew of Saracens, slays 100 of them, and brings the head of the master Saracen on the point of his sword to the king, where he sits in hall among his knights, and presents it in acknowledgment of his dubbing (compare p. 130 above). Fikenild tells Aylmar of Horn's love for his daughter, and Aylmar banishes Horn. Departing, he promises ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... misguided man that morning that he happened to have purchased a new and strong billycock the day before, else would that mace have sent him—as it had sent many a Saracen of old—to his long home. The blow effectually spoilt the billycock, however, and stretched its ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... grander than any aspiration of Saracen or Egyptian, we find, when Europe, slowly shaking off the lethargy of the Dark Ages, was developing the idea of religion. It was material, however, as well as spiritual. God was glorified, not only by repentance or holiness of life, but also by the devotion of hand and heart and fortune ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... of the first cities of Italy to fling off the Lombard yoke. Favoured by her position on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, yet not so near the coast as to invite piracy, she waged incessant war on Greek and Saracen. Lombardy, heavy with conquest, fearful for her prize, which was Italy, was compelled to encourage the growth of the naval cities. It was on the sea that the future of Pisa lay, like the glory of the sun that in its splendour and ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... arrival at the Saracen's Head Inn, at Glasgow, I was made happy by good accounts from home; and Dr Johnson, who had not received a single letter since we left Aberdeen, found here a great many, the perusal of which entertained him much. He enjoyed in imagination ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... extraordinary scene we descended to the ruins, and having taken at a farmhouse a person who acted as guide or cicerone, we began to examine those wonderful remains which have outlived even the name of the people by whom they were raised, and which continue almost perfect whilst a Roman and a Saracen city since raised have been destroyed. We had been walking for half an hour round the temples in the sunshine when our guide represented to us the danger that there was of suffering from the effects of malaria, for which, as is well known, this place is notorious, and advised us ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... she said, "Gnostic, I should think, for there is the cock upon it, and a lot that I can't read, probably a magic formula. No doubt the old Crusader got it in the East, perhaps as a gift from some Saracen in whose family it had descended. Oh! my dear boy, I do thank you. You could not have made me a present ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... possessed a castle all jagged at the corners, and shaped and pointed like a Spanish doublet, situated upon a bank from which it was reflected in the Loire. In the rooms were royal tapestries, furniture, Saracen pomps, vanities, and inventions which were much admired by people of Tours, and even by the archbishop and clerks of St. Martin, to whom he sent as a free gift a banner fringed with fine gold. In the neighbourhood of the said castle abounded fair domains, wind-mills, and forests, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... "The Pictorial History of France," but must be deferred also, with such comment as it needs, to next chapter; for I wish the reader's mind, in the close of this first number, to be left fixed on two descriptions of the modern 'Frank' (taking that word in its Saracen sense), as distinguished from the modern Saracen. The first description is by Colonel Butler, entirely true and admirable, except in the implied extension of the contrast to olden time: for the Saxon soul under Alfred, the Teutonic under Charlemagne, and the Frank under St. Louis, were ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... Lombardy. The Lombards boasted of Eastern descent, and were noisome. The Cagots were noisome, and therefore must be of Eastern descent. What could be clearer? In addition, there was the proof to be derived from the name Cagot, which those maintaining the opinion of their Saracen descent held to be Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the Saracens chased the Goths out of Spain. Moreover, the Saracens were originally Mahometans, and as such obliged to bathe seven times a-day: whence the badge of the duck's foot. ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... 216. Whilst still a child he is said to have been bought as a slave by a rich widow of Ctesiphon, who liberated him and on her death left him great wealth. According to another story—for the whole history of Manes rests on legends—he inherited from a rich old woman the books of a Saracen named Scythianus on the wisdom of the Egyptians. Combining the doctrines these books contained with ideas borrowed from Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity, and also with certain additions of his own, he elaborated a philosophic system which he proceeded to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... we sende you here inclosed the examination of a Scotish man, named Iohn Rough, who by the Queenes Maiesties commaundement is presently sent to Newgate, beeyng of the chief of them that vpon Sondaie laste, vnder the colour of commyng to see a Play at the Saracen's head in Islington, had prepared a Communion to be celebrated and received there among certaine other seditious and hereticall persons. And forasmuche as by the sayd Roughes examination, contayning the storie and progresse of his former life, it well appeareth of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... subject of bed in the same light. "Oh, not yet," she pleaded; "I want to speak to Mr.—" Having only heard the visitor's name once, and not finding her memory in good working order after the conjuring, Kitty hesitated. "Isn't your name something like Saracen?" she asked. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... tradition points to the last exploit of the valorous nephew of Charlemagne, whose type the imperial bird might well be deemed. It was here, according to the veracious chronicle of Archbishop Turpin, that, after defeating the Saracen king, Marsires, in the pass of Roncesvalles, Roland, grievously wounded, laid himself down to die, the shrill notes of his horn having failed to bring him the succour he expected from his uncle. It is in Roncesvalles that poets ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... great that he not only became from an insignificant man Sultan of Babylon, but also gained many victories over the Saracen and Christian kings, having in many wars and in his great magnificence spent all his treasure, and on account of some trouble having need of a great quantity of money, nor seeing where he should get it quickly as he had need to, was reminded of a rich Jew whose name ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... went into the City to meet her daughter at the Saracen's Head, whither the York coach used to run, and received her almost in silence. "Oh, mamma, dear mamma," said Lady Anna, "I am so glad to be back with you again." Sarah, the lady's-maid, was there, useless, officious, and long-eared. The Countess said almost nothing; she submitted to be kissed, ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... Italy to another, and encamped under the walls of Rome itself, left an indelible impression on the imagination of the Romans. The war with Carthage was to them all that the Arab invasion was to Spain, or the Saracen hordes to Eastern Europe. It was the first great struggle for empire in times of which history holds record, between the East and the West, between the Semitic and Aryan races, and Virgil, with consummate skill, took ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... panel-work, carved in high relief, with niches or compartments, each containing a human bust, that protruded almost entirely from the wall. Some of the figures were in ancient Gothic garb; the most striking among them was a female, who was earnestly regarded by a fierce Saracen from an ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... pushed on at the trot, for it was now approaching sunset. Whilst passing La Tricherie I halted for a moment to show mademoiselle the ruins of Baudimont, and pointed out to her, in the distance on our right, the field of Moussaisla-Bataille, where Charles the Hammer broke the Saracen advance ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... Giant and a Dwarf were friends, and kept together. They made a bargain that they would never forsake each other, but go seek adventures. The first battle they fought was with two Saracens, and the Dwarf, who was very courageous, dealt one of the champions a most angry blow. It did the Saracen but very little injury, who lifting up his sword, fairly struck off the poor Dwarf's arm. He was now in a woeful plight; but the Giant coming to his assistance, in a short time left the two Saracens dead on the plain, and the Dwarf cut off the dead man's head out of spite. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... years after the great Saracen invasion in the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in deadly hostility with one another. It was inhabited by races, the most dissimilar in their origin, religion, and government, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... valued treasures stored in these rooms," said our friend, the professor, "are trophies of the times when Crusader knight, Persian prince, and Saracen warrior went forth to battle arrayed in costly apparel, and encamped under silken canopies or in tents of cloth of gold. Then jeweled balls suspended from golden cords adorned the tent poles of the warriors, and luxury and opulence abounded underneath the canopies. The royalty ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... course, the scamp! And poor Lucy liking him so much. She wont believe it now, hardly. He looked so splendid taking up that key and swinging his sword about like a Saracen, Lucy says, just to tantalize me, when I know exactly what he is. But I come to ask a great favor, Miss Crawford. You're the only person that I breathed a word to about it. Supposing you just keep quiet, now, especially to James Harrington. It might do mischief there if you said ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... sword. Taillefer chanted the death of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all the other barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for dead by the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's returning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling a Saracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of his ivory horn—oliphant—he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, which he ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... very beginning of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... trust or give your countenance, in the way of the art to any man because you like his history or his manners. A thing you are very likely to do in spite of this advice, though you multiply portraits for "Saracen's Heads." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... utterance to his ideas in words which, even in a dead language, have to this day a living power. When Plato was dead, there remained his written words. They remain still. They have entered successively into the philosophies, the creeds, and the practical codes, of the Grecian world, the Roman, the Saracen, and the Christian. At this very hour hundreds of millions of human beings unconsciously hold opinions which the words of that wise old Greek have helped to mould. The mere brute force of a military conqueror may make arbitrary changes in the current of human affairs. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... of affairs followed, justifying us in speaking of this crusade as a comedy, in contrast with the tragic character of those which had preceded it. Frederick had shrewdly prepared for success, by negotiations, through his Saracen friends, with the Sultan of Egypt. On reaching the Holy Land he was received with joy by the German knights and pilgrims there assembled, but the clergy and the Knight Templars and Hospitallers carefully kept aloof from him, for Gregory had despatched a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... "There is the Saracen's head of Sir Bernard Brocas," quoth he. "I saw him last at the ruffle at Poictiers some ten years back, when he bore himself like a man. He is the master of the King's horse, and can sing a right jovial stave, though ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... may have courage enough to make him a visit; but I have no notion of going to any body's house, and have the servants look on the arms of the chaise to find out one's name, and learn one's face from the Saracen's head. You did not tell me how long you stayed at Wroxton, and so I direct this thither. I have wrote one to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... scene of The Talisman is in Palestine with Richard Coeur de Lion and his allies of the Third Crusade. From the contest on the desert between the Saracen cavalier and the Knight of the Sleeping Leopard to the final Battle of the Standard it is full of interest. CARNEGIE LIBRARY ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... enough for her to hear. Then turning to Caper, 'Let's andiammo,' (travel,) said he, 'that woman's face will haunt me for a month. I've seen it before; yes, seen her shut up in the Vatican, immortal on an old Etruscan vase. Egypt, Etruria, the Saracen hordes who once overrun all this Southern Italy, I find, every hour, among live people, some trace of you all; but of the old ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... succeeded in rising and taking. Having built streets of their old gravestones, they wander about scantly, trying to look alive—a dead failure." And yet, what ghostly recollections must have come back on him as he walked those streets, or as he passed by into Walcot, the Saracen's Head, where he had put up in those old days, full of brightness, ardour, and enthusiasm; but not yet the famous Boz! Bath folk set down this jaundiced view of their town to a sort of pique at the comparative failure ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... which we have less intercourse, whose customs are less accurately known, and whose history is less distinctly recounted, there are in this library reposited such accounts as the Europeans have been hitherto able to obtain; nor are the Mogul, the Tartar, the Turk, and the Saracen, without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... already the pursuit is begun—" and he leaned his head from the window and cried, "Faster! faster!" O'Toole, for his part, shouted, "Trinkgeldt!" It was the only word of German which he knew. "But," said he, "there was a Saracen lady I learned about at school who travelled over Europe and found her lover in an alehouse in London, with no word but his name to help her over the road. Sure, it would be a strange thing if I couldn't travel all over Germany ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... of Moorish origin, having been named after the famous Saracen chieftain, Tarik, who made this rock the starting point of his conquests in Spain. Hence it was called Gib-el-Tarik—the hill of Tarik—further Europeanized into the modern Gibraltar. This magnificent natural fortress rises perpendicularly to a height of 1300 feet from the purple waves ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... afterwards, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the Saxons a more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says Eginhard, "came to this town, to present himself before the king. He had arrived from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the king of the Franks himself and all the towns which the king of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... debouched by a hillock that rose from the valley-plain; a small newly-built church leaned against its eastern declivity, and it was fortified on all sides by walls and dikes, behind which the citizens found shelter when they were threatened by the Saracen robbers of the oasis. This hill passed for a particularly sacred spot. Moses was supposed to have prayed on its summit during the battle with the Amalekites while his arms were held ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... wherefore not?—Try me," answered the Flemish maiden, in return. "I am neither Saracen nor Welshman—his lance and sword scare me not. I follow not his banner—his voice of command concerns me not. I could, with your leave, boldly tell him he is a selfish man, veiling with fair and honourable ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... from Cornwall; but there still remain the Saracens. One is surprised to meet with Saracens in the West of England; still more, to hear of their having worked in the tin-mines, like the Jews. According to some writers, however, Saracen is only another name for Jews, though no explanation is given why this detested name should have been applied to the Jews in Cornwall, and nowhere else. This view is held, for instance, by Carew, who writes: "The Cornish maintain these works to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... outpost of Europe. For hundred of year the Byzantine Empire stood as a barrier against the Saracen hosts of Asia. It might have stood still longer, but sad to say, this barrier was first broken down by the Christians themselves. For in 1204 the armies of the fourth Crusade, which had gathered to fight the heathen, turned their swords, to their shame be it said, against ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... plain arches of its lantern support as perfect a cupola as if we were on the other side of the Loire. But both the arches of the lantern and the barrelled vault of the choir keep the round arch. Maine was far off from the land of the Saracen, and the pointed arch would here be a sign that later forms were not far off. From Ambrieres either the railway or, if the traveller likes it better, a road leading up and down over a series of low hills, will take him to another scene of William's victories at Mayenne. Here ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... set teeth and his gauntleted hand, He stretched with one buffet that page on the sand. . . For down came the Templars like Cedron in flood, And dyed their long lances in Saracen blood." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... against the Greek, or the Frank against the Armenian, or the Jacobite against the Nestorian, etc. In commerce and trade, the assizes held not so strictly in relation to religion and national descent; for whether Syrian or Greek, Jew or Samaritan, Nestorian or Saracen, they were still men, as well as the Franks, and must pay or serve according to judgment rendered, just as in the burghers' court, and hence it was determined that the court of commerce should apply the assizes of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... measuring twelve feet square, to which an allusion is made by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, act iii. sc. 2, line 44, was formerly preserved at the Saracen's Head at Ware, in Hertfordshire. The bed was removed from Ware to the Rye House ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... hundred thousand Mussulmans were drawn up in the plains of Assur, ready to bar the passage of the Christian army, and deliver a decisive battle. No sooner did he perceive the Saracen array, than Richard divided his army into five corps. The Templars formed the first; the warriors of Brittany and Anjou the second; the king, Guy, and the men of Poitou the third; the English and Normans, grouped round the royal standard, the fourth; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... thy day-spring, regenerate Greek! Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek: In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak, When their love and their lutes they reclaim; And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak Shall be "Glory ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... myself would let her stay. So it seems that she must needs have a wet skin." He felt carefully about the sleeping child; the cloak kept her dry and warm as a toast. She was sound asleep. "Good Lord!" cried Prosper, "it's a pity to disturb this baby of mine. Saracen and I had better souse. Moreover, I make no nearer, by all that appears, to river Wan or Holy Thorn. Come up, horse; ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... penances: fasting, scourging, imprisonment, and the privation of drinking water; for the Abbess stood amazed at the obduracy of my sin, and was resolved to make me an example to my fellows. For a month I endured the pains of hell; then one night the Saracen pirates fell on our convent. On a sudden the darkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns ran hither and thither, clinging to the Abbess's feet or shrieking on the steps of the altar, I slipped through an unwatched postern and made ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... Leo IV writes (xxiii, qu. 8, can. Igitur): "As untoward tidings had frequently come from the Saracen side, some said that the Saracens would come to the port of Rome secretly and covertly; for which reason we commanded our people to gather together, and ordered them to go down to the seashore." Therefore it is lawful for bishops ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... camp, without regard to flag of truce or ambassage. So Sir Morgadour persuaded Ernis to send Sir Guy to the Soudan saying, that, since the war seemed likely to come to no speedy issue, it should be settled by single combat between two champions chosen from the Christian and the Saracen hosts. The counsel seemed good to Ernis, but yet he liked not to risk his son-in-law's life; wherefore he called his Parliament together and asked for some bold knight to go and bear this message. When all the others held their peace, Sir Guy demanded ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... is a Saracen? (Here the word means merely a Mohammedan hostile to the Christians.) What does "rode like corn" mean? (We rode through their ranks as we ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... in subject, romances of chivalry, the first based upon the old Charlemagne epos—Orlando being identical with the hero of the French Chanson de Roland—the second upon the history of the first Crusade, and the recovery of the Holy City from the Saracen. But in both of them there was a splendor of diction and a wealth of coloring quite unknown to the rude mediaeval romances. Ariosto and Tasso wrote with the great epics of Homer and Vergil constantly in mind, and all about them was the brilliant light of Italian art, in its early ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... forgotten things. Columbus, according to a local tradition, was personally present at some of the latter campaigns in Grenada: he saw the last of them. So that the discovery of America may be used as a convertible date with that of extinction for the Saracen power in western Europe. True that the overthrow of Constantinople had forerun this event by nearly half a century. But then we insist upon the different proportions of the struggle. Whilst in Spain a province had fought against a province, all Asia militant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... the Mediterranean, their corsairs insulted the coasts of Italy, and even threatened the destruction of the Eastern empire. While Alexis was occupied in a war with Patzinaces, on the banks of the Danube, Zachas, a Saracen pirate, scoured the Archipelago, having, with the assistance of an able Smyrniote, constructed a flotilla of forty brigantines, and some light fast-rowing boats, manned by adventurers like himself. After ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... l. 4.—I have been warned of the "change-over" in "Saracen" and "Christian"—a slip of the pen which I am afraid I have been guilty of before now, though I have known the story for full forty years. But Floire, though a "paynim," was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first was written 'The Zarr,' and under the other 'The Empress Quean.' They were lolling their tongues out at each other; and over their heads ran a wooden label, inscribed, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... black she sat writing at a large table before one window. Her paper was fitted on to a wooden pulpit that rose before her; one book stood open upon it, three others lay open too upon the red and blue and green pattern of the Saracen rug that covered her table. At her right hand was a three-tiered inkstand of pewter, set about with the white feathers of pens; and the snakelike pattern of the table-rug serpentined in and out beneath seals of parcel gilt, a platter of bread, a sandarach of pewter, books bound ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... a Saracen maiden, Brunette, statuesque, The reverse of grotesque; Her pa was a bagman from Aden, Her mother ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... imagination is concerned with the Crusades, the Order of Knight Templars, and similar historical or legendary incidents and personalities in the early stages of the struggle between the Christian and the Saracen. The birthplace of Christ has special interest for a Hohenzollern who holds his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... record of genuine Arras tapestry occurs in an order from the Countess of Artois in 1313, when she directs her receiver "de faire faire six tapis a Arras." Among the craftsmen at Arras in 1389 was a Saracen, named Jehan de Croisetes, and in 1378 there was a worker by the name of Huwart Wallois. Several of its workmen emigrated to Lille, in the fifteenth century, among them one Simon Lamoury and another, Jehan de Rausart. In 1419 the Council Chamber of Ypres ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... their town, could be oblivious enough to permit their worshippers, coming to their shrine as true pilgrims, to be plundered and misused by such a miscreant dog as this Boar of Ardennes, who is worse than a whole desert of Saracen heathens, and all the ten tribes of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... with the effort by which Leo and the people of the empire saved the Roman law and the Christian religion from the conquering Saracen. It embraces the long and violent struggle between the government and the people, the emperors seeking to increase the central power by annihilating every local franchise, and to constitute themselves the fountains ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... snow and cutting winds, climbs the road that is known as the Great St. Bernard Pass. It is an old, old road. The Celts crossed it when they invaded Italy. The Roman legions crossed it when they marched out to subdue Gaul and Germany. Ten hundred years ago the Saracen robbers hid among its rocks to waylay unfortunate travellers. You will read about all that in your history sometime, and about the famous march Napoleon made across it on his way to Marengo. But the most interesting fact about the road ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... up with this sublime comparison, Methinks we may proceed upon our narrative, And, as my friend Scott says, 'I sound my warison;' Scott, the superlative of my comparative— Scott, who can paint your Christian knight or Saracen, Serf, lord, man, with such skill as none would share it, if There had not been one Shakspeare and Voltaire, Of one or both of whom he seems ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... this, it seems that orange-blossom was used centuries ago by Saracen brides in their personal decorations on the great day of their lives. It was meant to typify fruitfulness, and it is to be noted that the orange-tree bears both fruit and blossom at the same time, and is remarkable for its productiveness. It is possible, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... romance of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, (Earl of Southampton,) he is represented as a kind of infant Hercules, who, when fifteen, killed sixty Saracen knights. He afterwards was imprisoned at Damascus in a den with two dragons, but destroyed them. He was kept ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... as the enemies of Jesus. But the Spanish Jews sought assistance from their kinsmen the Saracens on the opposite coast; Spain was invaded and subdued by the Moors, and for several centuries the Jew and the Saracen lived under the same benignant laws and shared the same brilliant prosperity. In the history of Spain during the Saracenic supremacy any distinction of religion or race is no longer traced. And so it came to pass that when at the end of ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... no infidel, no Saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of Christ (who, it is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn at the first view of the Holy City) on the capture of that city. Murder was mercy, rape tenderness, simple plunder ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... as early as 181 B.C., was probably the principal one of the district in ancient times, as at present, and was the centre of a fishery. But its greatest importance dates from the time when it became, in 852, a seat of the Saracen power, and in 885, the residence of the Byzantine governor. In 1071 it was captured by Robert Guiscard. In 1095 Peter the Hermit preached the first crusade there. In 1156 it was razed to the ground, and has several times suffered destruction. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... may jet through/And keep their impious turbans on] The idea of a giant was, among the readers of romances, who were almost all the readers of those times, always confounded with that of a Saracen. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... instinctive fire and dash which culminates at once and without effort in perfect action, "as a bird flies, or a horse gallops." It startled the quiet members of the Guild, and at the first moment they hesitated to accept it. The "Rescue of the Saracen" and the "Transportation of the Body" are more in the golden-brown manner to which he was moving, but it is in the "Finding of the Body" (Brera) that he rises to the highest emotional pitch. The colossal form of the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... name of the thing) was of no account at all. Guy said that the siege of Acre was a foppery. King Philip was ill, or thought he was; Montferrat was treating with Saladin; the French knights openly visited the Saracen women; and the Duke of Burgundy got drunk. 'What else could he get, poor fool?' asked Richard; then said, 'But I promise you this: Montferrat shall never be King of Jerusalem while I live—not because I love you, my friend, but because I love the law. I shall come as soon as I can to Acre, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... be an appearance of candour on the part of the poet, and just so much merit allowed, even to the object of his censure, as to make his picture natural. It is a child alone who fears the aggravated terrors of a Saracen's head; the painter, who would move the awe of an enlightened spectator, must delineate his tyrant with human features. It seems likely, that Dryden considered the portrait of Shaftesbury, in the first edition of "Absalom and Achitophel," as ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... building of Constantinople a home for literature was found in the eastern cities; and, as the boundaries of the empire were broken down by the Saracen advance, learning gradually retired to the colleges and basilicas of the capital, and to the Greek monasteries of stony Athos, and Patmos, and the 'green Erebinthus.' Among the Romans of the East we cannot discern ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... signs of negligence which, in his case, might easily be taken for poverty. All his appointments, therefore, were carefully looked after; and on the Monday following, he, followed by his groom, rode away for the Saracen's Head at Heckleston, where he was to put up, for the races that were to begin on the day following, and presented as handsome an appearance as a peer in those days need ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... above, at Rocco Bruna, is a Saracen-built little town with strange dark people who seldom come down from the heights. You go by shady steps between high white walls to a little chapel, and there on Sunday a beloved cure beguiles an innocent little ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... The time was evidently ripe for Europe to awake from its intellectual sleep and begin a new educational development. The general causes which contributed to give fresh impulse to higher education at this time were the growing tendency to organization, the Saracen influence and the desire for higher learning in the more important centers. "The universities were founded," says Professor Laurie, "by a concurrence of able men who had something they wished to teach, and of youth who ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... those towels I purchased from the wandering Persian. I regret that I did not have them blessed by his Holiness. For who knows what spell the heretic Saracen may have cast ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... tutelary power to guard their growth and prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore; archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot coldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but imagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... doubtful. He takes up his narrative at Tauris, which he describes as a large flourishing town built in the midst of beautiful gardens and carrying on a great traffic in precious stones and other valuable merchandise, but its Saracen inhabitants are disloyal and treacherous. Here he seems to divide Persia geographically into eight provinces. The natives of Persia, according to him, are formidable enemies to the merchants, who are obliged to travel armed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... his, for instance, in his sickness, when he had seemed to be dead, and what might be the true duty of man. To be brave and upright? Surely. To fight for the Cross of Christ against the Saracen? Surely, if the chance came his way. What more? To abandon the world and to spend his life muttering prayers like those priests in the darkness behind him? Could that be needful or of service to God or man? To man, perhaps, because such folk tended ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... of paternosters, whose blows always fell without mercy, and who marched into battle reciting quotations from Scripture. Perhaps he might be more happily likened to one of the old Templars, careless of personal renown, kneeling to pray in front of the foe, and charging upon the Saracen to the accompaniment of that ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... 'gainst the Saracen rise, And purchase from him many a glorious prize; The rose and lily shall at first unite, But, parting of the prey prove opposite. * * * But while abroad these great acts shall be done, All things at home shall to disorder run. Cooped up and caged then shall the Lion be, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... vigorous enough to vivify what threatened to stifle it, and to assimilate to the old social forms what came to expel them: and thus the civilisation of modern times remains what it was of old; not Chinese, or Hindoo, or Mexican, or Saracen ... but the lineal descendant, or rather the continuation—mutatis mutandis—of the civilisation which ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Schofield, Landlord (in the middle of the last century) of the Saracen's Head Inn, Bridge Street, Horncastle, had a son, John, who left Horncastle for London, and became a member of the Stock Exchange, where, from small beginnings, he became so successful in business, that he eventually married a daughter ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... life is sustained in so fair a spot, who are born no one knows where, who live no one knows how, but who secure as much of the joy of life as any other human beings; the strange result of that endless combination of races which have come together in Naples—the Greek, the Italian, the Norman, the Saracen, and Heaven ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... was the one lesson left to ancient literature, and, this lesson once fully learned, it naturally and silently died. All know how the ages that followed were too preoccupied to think of writings its epitaph. For century after century Goth and Hun, Lombard and Frank, Bulgarian and Avar, Norman and Saracen, Catalan and Turk rolled on in a ceaseless storm of slaughter and rapine without; for century after century within raged no less fiercely the unending fury of the new theology. Filtered down through Byzantine epitomes, through Arabic translations, through every sort of strange ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... therefore, any difficulty should occur that cannot elsewhere be resolved, let it be brought before these Sees, and it shall, by divine grace, be decided. As Gallicia was freed in these early ages from the Saracen yoke, by the favour of God and St. James, and by the King's valour, so may it continue firm in the orthodox faith till ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... repeated blows of the Arab invasion. Why was this? The chroniclers gave answer without hesitation—"Peccatis exigentibus, victi sunt Christiani." The Goths (as they proudly called themselves) "have so offended Thee, O Lord, by their pride, that they deserved a fall by the sword of the Saracen." It was, in truth, as the great Sancho of Navarre declared in his charter of foundation to the abbey of Albelda, "Our ancestors sinned without scruple; they daily transgressed the commandments of the Lord, and so ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... accomplished in diplomacy—could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... Saracen At length a truce was made, And every knight returned to dry The tears his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... borne in London, his father hight Gilbert, but his mother was a Syrian borne, and by religion a Saracen: [Sidenote: The authoritie of Becket.] howbeit (no regard had of his parents) he grew so highlie in fauour with the king, and might doo so much in England, [Sidenote: An. Reg. 6.] that he seemed to reigne as if he had beene associat with him also in the kingdome, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... too much tired to care to look any longer out of the window, when the coach rumbled over the pebbly street into the courtyard of the 'Saracen's Head.' ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Saracen knight sent against the Crusaders, whom Tancred fell in love with, but slew on an encounter at night; before expiring she received ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[102]—a conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with a demand that he should give up his books, and also the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... furniture belongs the celebrated "Great Bed of Ware," of which there is an illustration. This was formerly at the Saracen's Head at Ware, but has been removed to Rye House, about two miles away. Shakespeare's allusion to it in the "Twelfth Night" has identified the approximate date and gives the bed a character. The following ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... and Gothic; but as to discovering the paternity even of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite another thing. Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard it as descended from Saracen and Arab art; nothing certainly ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... longest is the Hasbani, a strong, foaming stream that comes down with a roar from the western slope of Hermon. We cross it by the double arch of a dilapidated Saracen bridge, looking down upon thickets of oleander, willow, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... t'ward the Christian west The fell invasion of the Saracen Headed its course with crimson scimitar; Supplanting the mild precepts of the Cross With those of lust, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... lance, aimed by a flying Saracen who had wheeled round, hissed, and grazing the skin of the emperor's right hand, glanced over the ribs, and buried itself in his body. Julian thought the wound a slight one, and seizing the double-edged barb to withdraw it, cut his fingers. Blood gushed out, Julian uttered a cry, flung his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... better 'twould be to ride in mail A weary quest for the Holy Grail; Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword Around the sepulcher of our Lord; See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand All plashed with blood in that sacred land, Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light Deep into this world's long troublous night; That God hears our prayers, knows all our pains, That earthly sorrows are ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... winding river, up to the surrounding nether heights of the Bernese Oberland. Walls twelve feet in thickness tell the history of its ancient construction, and chambers cut in the massive stone foundations recall the rude life of the early knights and vassals who defended this chateau-fort from the Saracen invasion. Noble halls, later superimposed upon the earlier foundations, with stone benches flanking the walls and recessed windows overlooking the jousting court, evoke the glittering days of chivalry and the vision of the sovereign race of counts who here ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... dressed in woman's clothes, stood up above the bulwarks waving for assistance, while the cutlassed ruffians crouched below ready to do their bloody work when the other ship came near enough. Nor have we forgotten The Saracen's Head, at Ware, whence we went exploring down the little river Lea on Izaak Walton's trail; nor The Swan at Bibury in Gloucestershire, hard by that clear green water the Colne; nor another Swan at Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, which one reaches ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... glorious Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor, and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon the islands of the Atlantic ridge,—the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faeroes, and especially noble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... Age tapestries, their decorative value being so much greater. The book of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258-1268, contains a curious enumeration of the different craft-guilds of Paris, among which we find 'the tapiciers, or makers of the tapis sarrasinois (or Saracen cloths), who say that their craft is for the service only of churches, or great men like kings and counts'; and, indeed, even in our own day, nearly all our words descriptive of decorative textures and decorative methods point to an Oriental origin. What the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... another cousin, it appeared, the son of her mother's sister. He was all Spanish. There was not a drop of Arab blood in his veins, unless it came through Saracen ancestors in the days when ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... slay Paynims. I used to lie on the bank by the old Ohio, an' shet my eyes ag'in the brightness of the sky, an' figger on them setbacks we'd mete out to a Payaim if only we might tree one once in old Kaintucky. Which that Saracen would have shorely become the ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... my son," cried the Emperor, "beware what you do; the thing would be a sin. I felt sure this King Hercules was a Saracen!" ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... replide the Saracen, But I will teach thee how to cousen it, An oath in loue may be vnsworne againe, Ioue markes not louers oathes euery whit, Thou wilt repent beside, when riper wit Shall make thee know the magicke of thine eies, How faire thou art, and how ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... great intellectual revival, brought about by the Crusades. We have seen that through the despised Jew, at the time of the Conquest, a higher civilization was brought into England. Along with his hoarded gold came knowledge and culture, which he had obtained from the Saracen. Now, these germs had been revived by direct contact with the sources of ancient knowledge in the East during the Crusades; and while the long mental torpor of Europe was rolling away like mist before the rising sun, England felt the warmth of the same quickening rays, and Oxford ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... beauties. Provence, with its dazzling sun and glowing climate, possessed a striking resemblance to the Eastern countries, and among its inhabitants were many who could boast an Oriental ancestry. No less than five times did Saracen emirs lead their hosts into the country, endeavouring to overcome it not only by force of arms, but by the more peaceful and more certain method of introducing their own industries and customs. Provence ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... fam'd Rinaldo lies a-cold, And Tancred too, and Godfrey bold, That scal'd the holy wall! No Saracen meets Paladin, We hear of no great Saladin, But only grow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... same hour that Joseph came to Sarras there was a King that hight Evelake, that had great war against the Saracens, and in especial against one Saracen, the which was King Evelake's cousin, a rich king and a mighty, which marched nigh this land. So on a day these two met to do battle. Then Joseph, the son of Joseph of Arimathie, went to King Evelake and told him he should be discomfit and slain, but if he left his belief of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... continually to stop his description that he may repeat to his readers some anecdote which he remembers. Now it is how "Master Cartwright, a gentleman of Gray's Inn, who was grievously wounded into the lungs," was cured with the herb called "Saracen's Compound," "and that, by God's permission, in short space." Now it is to tell us that he has found yellow archangel growing under a sequestered hedge "on the left hand as you go from the village of Hampstead, near London, to the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... he demanded mirthfully.. "You are a regular fire-eater—a would-be Crusader against a modern Saracen host! Why are you choked with such seemingly unutterable wrath! ... what of the Press? ... it is at any ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... the work of creation came to him, he took the material already at hand and continued the story of 'Orlando.' With a certain skill and inventiveness, Boiardo had mingled together the epic cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne. He had shown the Saracen host under King Agramante driving the army of Charlemagne before them, until the Christians had finally been shut up within the walls of Paris. It was at this critical moment in his poem that Boiardo died. Ariosto took up the story where he had left it, and carried it on ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... era, and was never rebuilt. Later, the shore was too dangerous for habitation. Of all the cities upon the Ionian Sea, only Tarentum and Croton continued to exist through the Middle Ages, for they alone occupied a position strong for defence against pirates and invaders. A memory of the Saracen wars lingers in the name borne by the one important relic of Metapontum, the Tavola de' Paladini; to this ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... her drawings,—Livingstone is in raptures, or pretends to be (for he is not an ill-bred man). What a piercing expression flashes from those studies of eyes (in chalk)! what an artistical grouping of legs! what a Saracen's-head-upon-Snow-hill-like ferocity frowns from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... make him love and like her first, was her pretty leg and foot: a soft and white skin, &c. have their peculiar graces, [4926]Nebula haud est mollior ac hujus cutis est, aedipol papillam bellulam. Though in men these parts are not so much respected; a grim Saracen sometimes,—nudus membra Pyracmon, a martial hirsute face pleaseth best; a black man is a pearl in a fair woman's eye, and is as acceptable as [4927]lame Vulcan was to Venus; for he being a sweaty ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... into her house. This coming to her brothers' knowledge, they rushed into the room where the two lovers were, and Imelda could scarcely escape, whilst one of the brothers plunged a dagger, poisoned after the Saracen fashion, into Bonifazio's breast, whose body was thrown into some concealed part of the house and covered with rubbish. Imelda hastened to him, following the tracks of his blood, as soon as the brothers were gone; found him, and supposing him not quite dead, generously, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... he cleanse the rusty Key With Afric sand and oil, And hope an Andalusian home Shall recompense the toil! Well may he swear the Moorish spear Through wild Castile shall sweep, And where the Catalonian sowed The Saracen shall reap! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... gentleness and timidity of a girl, contrasting oddly with his swarthy skin, his hairy lips, his great hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of an Algerine pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are frequent in Tarascon, where heads have too much character, Roman or Saracen, heads with the expression of models for a school of design, but quite out of place in bourgeois trades among the manners and ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... passed before the hermit's grotto on Monte Sirach. Enter Captain Mucioalbano with two comic Saracen soldiers. They have searched all the mountain and this is the only grotto they have found; they hope it will prove to be the right one, for they are tired ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... They are all hard by Marseilles. But Avignon ever most caught my fancy, for there the nights seem peopled with the ghosts of warriors and cardinals, and there on festal mornings the spirits of Petrarch and his Laura walk abroad, the ramparts, which bade defiance to Goth and Vandal and Saracen hordes, now giving shelter to bats and owls, but the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... and dined, I well remember, we two alone, and, as I thought, magnificently, in a great apartment in "The Saracen's Head," at the end of which was the county ball-room. We had come across from Dunoon and landed in a small boat at the Water Neb along with Mrs. Dr. Hall, a character Sir Walter or Galt would have made immortal. My father with ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... of Granada has found once more the shelter of an African desert, and even a Saracen horse, in an estate which comes to it from Saracens. How the eyes of these brigands—who but yesterday had dreaded my authority—sparkled with savage joy and pride when they found they were protecting against the King ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... base, unhallowed clay, Thou slimy-sprighted, unkind Saracen, When thou wert born, Dame Nature cast her calf; For age and time hath made thee a great ox, And now thy grinding jaws devour quite The fodder due to us of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... somewhat) and another man's so great, that both nature and God also would that I should, in such unequal need, relieve that urgent necessity of a stranger—yea, my foe, and God's enemy too, the very Turk or Saracen—before a little need, and unlikely to do great harm, in my father and my mother too. For so ought they both twain themselves to be ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... Sawyer, looking in at the coach window, as they pulled up before the door of the Saracen's Head, Towcester, 'this won't ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... of every merry company, an actor is necessary who feels pleasure when the others, to enliven many an indifferent moment, point the arrows of their wit at him. If he is not merely a stuffed Saracen, like those on whom the knights used to practise their lances in mock battles, but understands himself how to skirmish, to rally, and to challenge, how to wound lightly, and recover himself again, and, while he seems to expose ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... to the infusion of Oriental blood; and with some of them it may be the case. But with many of them, the reference is a false one. Half the Spanish character was Iberic and Lusitanian before either Jew or Saracen had seen the Rock ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... to be told how Sir Tristram loved the Lady Belle Isoult and how she loved Sir Tristram. Also how a famous knight, hight Sir Palamydes the Saracen, loved Belle Isoult and of how she loved ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... similar occasions in Italy, the country appears to have remained in more quiet, and probably enjoyed, in spite of the presence of an invading army, more prosperity, than it had ever done during any period of the same length, since the Saracen government ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... Armenia dwelt in a castle of hewn stone about which a little city clustered, with mountains on every side to darken the sky, He was as swarthy as a Saracen and had a long nose like a Jew, but he was a good Christian and a wise ruler, though commonly at odds with his cousin of Antioch. From him Aimery had more ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen's Head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to come and open ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... mention the names of Breidenbach of Mentz, and of Martin Baumgarten, who in the beginning of the sixteenth century achieved a journey into the Holy Land. The latter of these, while passing through Egypt, was most barbarously treated by the Saracen boys, who pelted him with dirt, brickbats, stones, and rotten fruit. At Hebron he was shown the field "were it is said, or at least guessed, that Adam was made;" but the reddish earth of which it is composed is now used in the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... with Verona and Friuli. Documents show the presence of large numbers of persons of German origin during the tenth century; but the maritime cities, depending upon commerce, were forced into connection with Venice by the necessity of making arrangements for mutual defence against Slav and Saracen Corsairs, and thus the foundations were laid for ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... this adventure against a mighty and mysterious enemy was simply enormous in the transformation of England, as of all the nations that were developing side by side with England. Firstly, we learnt enormously from what the Saracen did. Secondly, we learnt yet more enormously from what the Saracen did not do. Touching some of the good things which we lacked, we were fortunately able to follow him. But in all the good things which he lacked, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... effected it; Sogdiana was at its very extremity, or its borderland; there the last king of Persia took refuge from the south, while the Turks were pouring into it from the north. There was little to choose for the unfortunate prince between the Turk and the Saracen; the Turks were his hereditary foe; they had been the giants and monsters of the popular poetry; but he threw himself into their arms. They engaged in his service, betrayed him, murdered him, and measured themselves with the Saracens in his stead. Thus the military ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... Moorish grandeur and skill, as this Capitol is the pride of American architecture, you may see cut in stone a hand holding a key, surmounting the horse-shoe arch of the main gateway. They are the three types of strength, speed, and secresy, the boast of a now fallen Saracen race, sons of that sea of sand, the desert, who carried the glory of Islam to furthest Gades. In an evil hour of civil strife and bitter hatred of faction, the Alhambra was betrayed to Spain, 'to feed fat ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes



Words linked to "Saracen" :   history, nomad, Arabian



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