"Tatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bonnet of his son, brought to him from where the lad fell, 'The memory of his boy, it is almost his religion.'—A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch. on a wire of a German entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops have ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... excursions was to Ba'albak, which is far more beautiful, though smaller, than Palmyra; and it can be seen without danger—Palmyra cannot. The ruins are very beautiful. The village hangs on to the tail of the ruins—not a bad village either, but by comparison it looks like a tatter clinging to an empress's diamond-bespangled train. The scenery around ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... wanted to be a sailor. When the high water came in the spring, the sofa went sailing. He had a Rooster for a crew, while Tatter, the rag doll with one shoe button ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... alighting just inside the entrance of one of our operating tents it was blown into tiny shreds, and ten stretchers were riven into matchwood. Strange to say, although this was in the middle of our camp not a soul was injured. The excitement was of course great, every little bit of shell and every tatter of the tent were carefully gathered to be kept as souvenirs. Three men and a number of horses had been killed in the afternoon's work. Many of the shells to-day were bigger than usual and some think the "Goeben" is the culprit. She could easily ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Where Druids, auncient preests, did ryghtes ordaine, And in the middle shed the victyms bloude; Where auncient Bardi dyd their verses synge 305 Of Caesar conquer'd, and his mighty hoste, And how old Tynyan, necromancing kynge, Wreck'd all hys shyppyng on the Brittish coaste, And made hym in his tatter'd barks to flie, 'Till Tynyan's dethe ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... author takes scant pleasure. Things are on a different footing now. The Act of 1842 has extended the statutory periods of protection. The perpetuity craze is over. A right in perpetuity to reprint Frank Fustian's novel or Tom Tatter's poem would not add a penny to the present value of the copyright of either of those productions. In business short views must prevail. An author cannot expect to raise money on his hope of immortality. Milton's publisher, good Mr. Symonds, probably ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Leonine, the man she employed to do this bad deed, though he was a very wicked man, could hardly be persuaded to undertake it, so had Marina won all hearts to love her. He said: 'She is a goodly creature!' 'The tatter then the gods should have her,' replied her merciless enemy: 'here she comes weeping for the death of her nurse Lychorida: are you resolved to obey me?' Leonine, fearing to disobey her, replied: 'I am resolved.' And so, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... man all tatter'd and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milk'd the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That kill'd the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in the ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... trembling teems With golden visions, and romantic dreams! Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blaz'd The Gipsy's faggot—there we stood and gaz'd; Gaz'd on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, Her tatter'd mantle, and her hood of straw; Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... thence to Death— I thought I should have had a Tomb hung round With tatter'd Ensigns, broken Spears and Javelins; And that my Body, with a thousand Wounds, Shou'd have been borne on some triumphant Chariot, With solemn Mourning, Drums, and Trumpets sounding; Whilst all the wondring ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... a Healand padyane; Syne ran a feynd to feche Makfadyane[28] Far northwart in a nuke.[29] Be he the correnoch had done schout Erschemen so gadderit him about In Hell grit rowme they tuke. Thae tarmegantis with tag and tatter Full lowde in Ersche begowth to clatter, And rowp lyk revin and ruke. The Devill sa devit was with thair yell That in the depest pot of Hell ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... tatter of the good flag, pressing hard upon D'ri, and put it to his lips and kissed it proudly. Then we marched up and down, D'ri waving it above us—a bloody squad as ever walked, shouting loudly. D'ri had begun to weaken with loss of ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... too—no doubt it is A right fine thing; or rather to have been there. But all things have their price; and this, methinks, Is rather dear sometimes. Oh! glory's but The tatter'd banner in a cobwebb'd hall, Open'd not once a-year—a doubtful tomb, With half the name effaced. Of all the bones Have whiten'd battle-fields, how many names Live in the chronicle? and which were in the right? One murder hangs a man upon a rope, A hundred thousand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... unsubstantial Sprite To his astonish'd gaze each moment grew; Ghastly and gaunt, it rear'd its shadowy height, Of more than mortal seeming to the view, And round its long, thin, bony fingers drew A tatter'd winding-sheet, of course ALL WHITE;— The moon that moment peeping through a cloud, Nick very plainly saw it THROUGH ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary: Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rook'd in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles Black-plaster'd, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons, And tatter'd coats of arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The mansions of the dead.—Roused from their slumbers, In grim array the grisly spectres rise, 40 Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen, Pass and repass, hush'd as the foot ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... cried Mahoun for a Hielan Padyane, Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane, Far north-wast in a neuck; Be he the coronach had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took. Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook. The Devil sae deaved was with their yell, That in the deepest pot of hell ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... tatter to pieces the rude coarse materia of things, and think we know the nature of an object, because, like a child with a mirror, we break it to find the image. But the life of the thing—the inner, hidden mystic life of sympathies—of this we ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Sir, belong." And then, as if the thought would choke Her very heart, her grief grew strong; And all was for her tatter'd Cloak. ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... tatter'd old slippers that toast at the bars, And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars, Away from the world and its toils and its cares, I've a snug little kingdom up four ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... her own dogs, or she-dogs! The Demoiselle, keeping her carriage, is for Liberty indeed, as she has full well shewn; but then for Liberty with Respectability: whereupon these serpent-haired Extreme She-Patriots now do fasten on her, tatter her, shamefully fustigate her, in their shameful way; almost fling her into the Garden-ponds, had not help intervened. Help, alas, to small purpose. The poor Demoiselle's head and nervous-system, none of the soundest, is so tattered and fluttered that it will never recover; but ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... eyes upon her I knew her at once for a neighbour's daughter, one Anty Dooley, who had died a few months before, and who, when she was alive, could beat the whole county round at any sort of reel, jig, or hornpipe. The music struck up 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' and maybe it's she that didn't set, and turn, and thrush the boords, until the young prince hadn't as much breath left in his body as would blow out a rushlight, and he was forced to sit down puffing and panting, and laving his partner standing in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... figure is charming and bright, And to speak in thy praise all the world doth delight, But I'm a poor fellow all tatter'd and torn, Whom all the world ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Rustenburg we went with Mahon The wily Boers to scatter; Burnt many a farm and useful barn, And got—our clothes a-tatter. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... vital importance, the position of the question may easily be understood. Dr. Lightfoot, however, evidently seems to suppose that I can be charged with want of candour and of fulness, because I do not reproduce every shred and tatter of apologetic reasoning which divines continue to flaunt about after others have rejected them as useless. He again accuses me, in connection with the fourth Gospel, of systematically ignoring the ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... ignorant indeed of these my woes? Or must my forced tongue my griefs disclose? And must myself dissect my tatter'd state, Which mazed Christendome stands wond'ring at? And thou a child, a Limbe, and dost not feel My fainting weakened body now to reel? This Physick purging portion I have taken, Will bring Consumption, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... conquer'd, Have any title to his own beard; Though yours be sorely lugg'd and torn, It does your visage more adorn 170 Than if 'twere prun'd, and starch'd, and lander'd, And cut square by the Russian standard. A torn beard's like a tatter'd ensign, That's bravest which there are most rents in. That petticoat about your shoulders 175 Does not so well become a souldier's; And I'm afraid they are worse handled Although i' th' rear; your beard the van led; And those uneasy bruises make ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... old scarecrow, sir!" said Buck. "He only wants one or two old clothes put on him, and he'd make a fine tatter-dooley. Not much to be afraid of in him! Well, ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... of vanish'd happiness! —But when the unwilling sun crept up again, And loosed the sea from winter and duresse, The seal-wrapt race that roams the Lapland main Saw in Arzina, wondering, fearing more, The tatter'd ships, in ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the MAY-FLOWER began at London, as her consort's did at Delfshaven, and though, as incident to the tatter's brief career, we have been obliged to take note of some of the happenings to the larger ship and her company (at Southampton, etc.), out of due course and time, they have been recited only because of their insuperable relation to the consort and her company, and not as ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... tack'd to't, for fear of spoiling the Character; there you may find 24 pages, one after another, all written to prove most gloriously, that 'tis impossible for a Chaplain to be a Servant; that tho' you find a poor fellow in a tatter'd Excommunicated Gown with one sleeve, Shoes without heels, miserable Antichristian breeches, with some two dozen of creepers brooding in the seams; and tho' you take him charitably to your House, feed, clothe, and give him wages, yet he belongs ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... little girls and old women carrying water from the well as stolidly as though adventure had never stalked across her path. A whole garment had been given her instead of the tatter of rags in which she had returned to the little Indian pueblo. She replied briefly to his queries regarding her welfare, and when he asked where she was living, she accompanied him to an old adobe where there were two other motherless ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... must beg, with a wooden arm and leg, And many a tatter'd rag hanging over my bum, I'm as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet, As when I used in scarlet to follow ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... very tatter-demalions—and the front man led them, tapping the ground with a long stick. The others clung to him in line, one behind the other. He was the only clean-shaven one, and he was the tallest. He looked as if he had not been blind so long, for his physical ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... part of the rock is the head and shoulders—clean it nicely, put it into the fish kettle with cold water and salt, boil it gently and skim it well; when done, drain off the water, lay it in the dish, and garnish with scraped horse-radish; have two boats of tatter nicely melted with chopped parsley, or for a change, you may have anchovy butter; the roe and liver should be fried and served in separate dishes. If any of the rock be left, it will make a delicious dish next day;—pick it in small pieces, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... and here she stands, And gives me hers in both my hands, And blushes to her brow. She eyes askance her simple gown, And folds a Judas tatter down She has not ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... the linnen is just come home from washing you would oftentimes find it in such a condition, that you might very well imagine your self to be in Westminster Hall where the Colours that are Trophies of honour are hung up, one full of holes, another tatter'd & torn, and ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... taking you from beggary? Are these the thanks I get for freeing you from rags that you might have hung distaffs with? Is this my reward for having put good clothes on your back when you were a poor, starved, miserable, tatter-shod ragamuffin? But such is the fate of him who washes an ass's head! Go! A curse upon all I have done for you! A fine gold coffin you had prepared for me! A fine funeral you were going to give me! Go, now! serve, labour, toil, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Richard II. (iii. 3) 'the castle's totter'd battlements' (the reading of the 4to.; the Folios give 'tatter'd'). In King John (v. 5) I think, with Staunton, that the expression 'tott'ring colours' means 'drooping colours' rather than, as usually ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... then only to fall. And the waves of men no longer broke from the woods to lap up and recede sullenly down the slope. Out of nowhere, just as they fell back to the first fringe of trees, came an officer on a tall gray horse. His coat was gone, he rode in his shirt sleeves, and a bullet-torn tatter waved from one wide shoulder. Above prominent cheekbones, his eyes were hot and bright, his clipped beard pointed sharply from a jaw which must be grimly set, his face was flushed, and his energy and will was like a cloud to engulf the disheartened ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight^, whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau^, screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet^, flitter, gobbet^, mite, bit, morsel, crumb, seed, fritter, shive^; snip, snippet; snick^, snack, snatch, slip, scrag^; chip, chipping; shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair. nutshell; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... misled by talk like this. With a full knowledge of the situation— forced upon him by various events—the badinage of the brilliant militario does not for a moment blind him. Circumstances have given him enough insight into Uraga's character and position to know that the tatter's motives should somewhat resemble his own. He has long been aware that the Lancer colonel is in love with his young mistress, as much as he himself with her maid. Without this knowledge he might not have been there—at least, not with so confident an expectation of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... clenching and unclenching his hands and quivering with anger. It was in that moment that he most fervently cursed Tressan and his stupid meddling. Had the troopers still been there, they could have made short work of these tatter-demalions. As it was, and with Monsieur de Garnache dead, or at least absent, everything seemed at an end. He might have contended that, his master being slain, it was no great matter what he did, for in the end the Condillacs must surely ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the Sanctus bell rang, and she remembered why she had stayed in church. She wished to discover what remnant, tatter or shred of her early faith still clung about her. She wished to put her agnosticism to the test. She wondered if at the moment of consecration she would be compelled to bow her head. The bell rang ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Not left him a tatter— Not a rag of his present or past reputation, 30 Which they call a disgrace to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... with thee to-night. Let's see for means;—O mischief, thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! I do remember an apothecary,— And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... richer swains thy love pursue, In Sunday gear and bonnets new; And every fair before thee lay Their silken gifts, with colours gay— They love thee not, alas! so well As one who sighs, and dare not tell; Who haunts thy dwelling, night and noon, In tatter'd hose and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste money; he never had any. Once I asked father what he thought Isaac would do with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine Providence, he got ten dollars. Father said he could tell me exactly, because Isaac once sold some ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... of propping the tatter's pretensions, I was throwing out a hint concerning Kentucky, as a land of tall men, when our Vine-yarder turned away abruptly, and desired to hear nothing more. It was evident that he took Long Ghost ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... of a poor old man, Whole trembling limbs have borne him to your door; Whole days are dwindled to the shortest span, Oh! give relief and heav'n will bless your store, These tatter'd clothes my poverty bespeak, Those hoary locks proclaim my lengthen'd years; And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek Has been the channel to a flood of tears. You house erected on the rising ground, With ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... make sufficiently clear to the reader. And this was her connection and residence with that old man. Her character forming, as his was completely gone; here, the blank becoming filled—there, the page fading to a blank. It was the tatter, total Deathliness-in-Life of Simon, that, while so impressive to see, renders it impossible to bring him before the reader in his full force of contrast to the young Psyche. He seldom spoke—often, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some having disappeared altogether, Roswell set out for the cape, leaving the second mate in charge of the wreck. Lee, the young Vineyarder, who had been rescued from freezing by the timely arrival of our hero, accompanied the tatter, having joined his fortunes to those of the Oyster Ponders. The two reached the house before dark, where they found Hazard and his companions in a good deal of concern touching the fate of the party that was out. A deep impression was made by the report ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... it was nigh, and the mass it was nigher, When before the fair Princess low looted a squire, And deliver'd a garment unseemly to view, With sword-cut and spear-thrust, all hack'd and pierc'd through; All rent and all tatter'd, all clotted with blood, With foam of the horses, with dust, and with mud; Not the point of that lady's small finger, I ween, Could have rested on ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... being naked, save a tatter'd Pair of scarce decent trowsers—went to work, And in the fire his recent rags they scatter'd, And dress'd him, for the present, like a Turk, Or Greek—that is, although it not much matter'd, Omitting ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... I do think there is not to be had . . . . . . . . . . The blue wheat-acre is underneath And the braided ear breaks out of the sheath, The ear in milk, lush the sash, And crush-silk poppies aflash, The blood-gush blade-gash Flame-rash rudred Bud shelling or broad-shed Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled Dandy-hung dainty head. . . . . . . . And down ... the furrow dry Sunspurge and oxeye And laced-leaved lovely Foam-tuft fumitory . . . . . . . Through the velvety wind V-winged To the nest's nook I balance and buoy ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... her! shatter her! Throw and scatter her!" Shouts each stony-hearted chatterer! "Dash at the heavy Dover! Spill her! kill her! tear and tatter her! Smash her! crash her!" (the stones didn't flatter her!) "Kick her brains out! let her blood spatter her! Roll on her ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... stores; To good Acastus' friendly care consign'd: But other counsels pleased the sailors' mind: New frauds were plotted by the faithless train, And misery demands me once again. Soon as remote from shore they plough the wave, With ready hands they rush to seize their slave; Then with these tatter'd rags they wrapp'd me round (Stripp'd of my own), and to the vessel bound. At eve, at Ithaca's delightful land The ship arriv'd: forth issuing on the sand, They sought repast; while to the unhappy kind, The pitying gods themselves my chains unbind. Soft ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Fights; and had Achilles, with his batt'ring Rams, felt half the Fury of an English General, Troy had ne'er bully'd out a Ten Years Siege—but Ladies are more craftily subdu'd; you mustn't storm a Nymph with Sword and Pistol, pursue her as you wou'd a tatter'd Frenchman, push her Attendants into the Danube, then seize her, and clap her into a Coach—I'll baffle her at her own Argument, swear I'd not wed a Phoenix of her Sex, and laugh at Dress and Beauty, Wit and Fortune, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... is trying to hide the tatter, Mark how his looks will fall! Nobody needs to ask the matter With ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... lighted up, Kenn'd ye the nobles that revell'd sae rarely; Saw ye the chiefs of Lochiel and Clanronald, Wha rush'd frae their mountains to follow Prince Charlie? But saw ye the blood-streaming fields of Culloden, Or kenn'd ye the banners were tatter'd sae sairly; Heard ye the pibroch sae wild and sae wailing, That mourn'd for the chieftains that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various |
